


The Unnamed Days

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Infinity Gems, M/M, Multi, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Pseudo-Incest, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-01-02 12:28:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 204,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the events of <i>Thor: The Dark World</i>, Jane opens her home to Thor in the hopes that now he will have time enough to at last come to terms with everything that has happened to him in the past two years.</p><p>As it turns out, Loki has plans of his own for his erstwhile elder brother and the mortal astrophysicist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1.1: Flux

**Author's Note:**

> This longfic came about as something of an inadvertent attempt at NaNoWriMo for the year (which, considering the Word .doc hit 50k today, I have by now just as inadvertently won). At its heart it is a way of exploring the terrible complications of Thor and Loki's relationship to one another, but it also allows me to give Jane something of a truer voice than I personally think she was ever allowed in either movie. In that, at least, the first six parts of the fic come to us in her voice. I can only hope it rings true.
> 
> And yes, while the fic is labelled Loki/Thor and will go down that path one way or another, to my mind it is more about Thor being given the space to deal with the emotional suckerpunch that has been the three movies up to this point, Jane getting the opportunity to make something of the science and sorcery she's been introduced to, and Loki finally finding some goddamned perspective on the shit that's gone down in his life in the last two years. The trick comes in the fact that they have to do this _together_.
> 
> That's where the fun really starts, after all.

The railing felt cool beneath her fingers, flecks of peeling paint catching in the nervous scratch of nails. She shifted along. Dogs had never really been her thing. She’d never been a cat person, either. In fact pets had never been high on her list of priorities, but that probably wasn’t the only reason why the scene before her felt quite this weird.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” she asked finally, wincing on the words as soon as they left her mouth. He didn’t seem bothered by them, and in fact smiled as he leaned further into the mesh wiring. The creature on the other side curved closer, great maw in a grotesque parody of a smile as the small eyes closed, the swell of its abdomen vibrating with something oddly close to a purr.

“He seems to be enjoying it,” Thor said mildly, and Jane couldn’t help but tilt her head sideways, her own arms firmly crossed over her chest.

“Are you sure it’s a _he_?”

The zookeeper at Jane’s side chuckled, though the faint nervous air hadn’t left her since Thor had decided to stick his hand through the barrier and actually pet the miserable-looking creature inside. “We haven’t got that far yet. We were hoping your friend could tell us, actually.”

Curving his hand, Thor followed the line of one of the creature’s great mandibles. From the way it crowded closer yet, it apparently enjoyed the attention. “Unfortunately, I have met but one of these beasts before, and that only briefly.”

“And?”

His hand stilled on the horned ridges of its thickened skin, head bowing forward so that she could not quite make out the expression upon his face. “I…put my hammer through its head.”

“I’m guessing it didn’t appreciate that,” the keeper remarked with clear disapproval, and Thor gave a half-hearted chuckle. Still, when he looked up, there was a faint sparkle in his eyes.

“It did not do much for its mental faculties, no.”

Shifting from one foot to the other, the woman frowned again at where Thor still touched the creature; Jane could understand it, though it was pretty hard to argue basic animal safety with an alien prince who could call down lightning with a hammer no-one else could lift. “But you do know something about where it is from, then?”

“Not in any great detail, no, though it was upon its homeworld that I met one of this creature’s kin. It was a much larger specimen.” Even the faintest vestiges of amusement fled his expressive features then, entire great body going very still. The creature made an unhappy noise and butted its head against his hand, though Thor’s eyes had gone distant and strange when he spoke next. “Laufey unleashed one upon our company.”

“Laufey?” Jane repeated, curling her tongue about the unfamiliar word. If possible, Thor stilled even further.

“The former King of Jötunheimr.” Again, the creature gave an unhappy whine that sounded oddly like a puppy denied his master’s attention; Thor rubbed an open palm over its neck, and sighed. “He was Loki’s sire.”

The confused look on the keeper’s face in the silence that followed might have been comical, if not for that continuing distance in Thor’s eyes. It reminded her of the sea of gold, of the sky of silver, and of a thousand voices held silent in their mourning.

Thor at last withdrew his hand, gave a little soothing click of his tongue to the frost beast; it curled up against the boundary fence, the wire bowing alarmingly under its weight. “We were never permitted to go to Jötunheimr, after the war – which was won when I was but a very small child, and Loki himself scarcely more than an infant.” Stepping back, he brushed his hands over his thighs, pursed his lips. “And after the destruction of the Bifröst, it did not suffer so greatly as did other realms in the chaos that followed; it had not the resources or appeal for the marauders we fought off elsewhere. I have not returned to that place since my first journey.”

“So you can’t give us any advice on how to care for this creature?”

A frown bisected his brow. “I should think the best thing would be to return the creature to its home,” he said with firm command, though the words were kindly enough given. “It will grow to be very much larger than it is now, and though it seems it is not...disinclined to flesh, I am not certain that would be its usual fare.”

“Then what would be?”

The woman’s eagerness appeared to disarm him utterly, and Jane pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. It didn’t mask her giggle in the slightest. “I do not know, not for certain. Jötunheimr is a place of dark legend, told to children to scare them into good behaviour. I am not at all sure that anything I might tell you of its lands or its creatures would be in any way true. It should be returned to its home.”

His sober expression took any amusement out of the situation for Jane, then. “And even if you don’t, SHIELD’s probably going to swoop in here and confiscate the big guy anyway. You might as well let the poor thing go home.”

Jane did choose not to add that said _poor thing_ had taken out the Thames’ floodgates on what appeared to be a swim up towards Gravesend, but then it seemed to need the moisture. And in a very strange way, it _was_ sort of cute. For something that seemed to be a cross between an overgrown Labrador and Godzilla.

“I do understand your fascination,” Thor was saying, and Jane recognised the regal tone he couldn’t help but adopt when he did not expect to be argued with; it shivered down her spine like thunder. “But he has a home, and he will be happier there. Who are we to deny him that?”

“But this is an entirely new creature, one we’ve never seen before on this planet!”

“From the stories I recall, it has seen your planet before. It did not end well.” His hand rested light upon her shoulder, his smile crooked and kind. “Midgard, it seems, is no place for those born of Jötunheimr. I will ensure he returns home.”

The keeper seemed no happier for that assertion, and the same could be said of her colleagues, yet it seemed hard to see it ending any other way. Thor was very quiet when they eventually walked away together, leaving in his wake promises made to ascertain the logistics of returning said creature to its homeworld.

They were perhaps five minute’s dawdling walk from the quarantine enclosure before he spoke, sudden and wondering. “Your zoological gardens are…very interesting.”

“You don’t have zoos on Asgard?”

His brow furrowed, the low ponytail of his hair shifting between his shoulderblades as he shook his head. “Mother kept her birds, as did many ladies of the court. Father had Muninn and Huginn, though of course they could not be called pets. But as to a menagerie of this kind or scope…no. Animals are farmed as stock, and there are hounds and housecats and other beasts of burden throughout the homes and the streets, but the greater beasts live where they are born. If one wishes to see them, then one must go to them.”

“If we did that, there likely wouldn’t be any left to see.” Digging her hands into her coat pocket, she found a roll of Polo mints, tightened her fingers about it. “We haven’t managed the Earth all that well. I guess Loki had that much right, at least.”

She could have bitten her tongue. But Thor did not break stride and instead kept moving, all fluid grace beneath denim and the cotton of his shirt.

“It’s okay to miss him,” she said, sudden, voice half a pitch higher than normal. “I mean, despite everything else he did…he did the right thing. In the end.”

Again she regretted the words almost as soon as they left her lips. Though he’d scarcely been in London forty-eight hours he’d already shown he was not inclined to speak of Loki around the others, though she could hardly blame Erik for not wanting to hear about him. But then he had never spoken in any detail, either, of the discussion he had had with his father before he had returned to Earth.

But then, too, she could remember all too well how he had been, hunched over the colourless corpse of his brother. The sky had tasted of ozone, the iron tang of heavy water sharp upon her tongue. Despite having no love for the brother he had lost, her skin had crawled to see the way Thor had lain him down. Had left him behind. There had been a war to win, of course. Battles to be fought. Sacrifice could not made in vain.

But Thor had left something behind with his brother. Jane did not think it was something he could share again with anyone, not even her.

It didn’t mean she didn’t intend to let him know that he could, if he wanted to.

They’d come to a stop before the tiger enclosure. This early on a weekday morning there were scarcely any other visitors; the tiger, however, moved like a restless soul through the long grass, mouth half-opened on an unvoiced snarl. Her own stomach gave an inquisitive rumble, as if it too wondered when breakfast would be forthcoming. “So how are you planning to get that thing back to Jötunheimr?” she asked, leaning against the outer barrier, turning her gaze back to Thor. “Heimdall?”

Thor drew up beside her, weight upon his forearms as he leaned closer to the enclosure’s boundary. Thankfully, he made no attempt to reach through this time. “I will call to him, yes. I believe he will aid me.” She could not read the tone of his voice when he answered, mild as a summer breeze: “I am no more exiled from Asgard and her assistance than he is no longer her gatekeeper, for all our trespasses against her king.”

“I…I really want to say thank you to him for that.”

He turned his face to her, then nodded his head upwards. “You may say it any time, and he will know of it.”

“Yeah, but that omniscient knowledge thing kind of lacks the personal touch, you know?”

Even the faintest of his smiles reminded her of the dance of a Tesla coil’s discharge. “I know.”

“Can I help?” The odd look he gave her bordered a very thin line between incredulous and downright insulting. “Well, not with the animal wrangling, obviously, but…I would love to see the Bifröst in action again. It would help with my work.”

He took his time about the answer, wary as a hunter taking the measure of unexpected quarry. “I am sure Heimdall would be pleased to offer you the chance to observe.”

“No, I mean…I could come with you. If you’re actually going there, I mean. Or are you just going to shift it there?”

To his credit, he did not immediately say no. “Jötunheimr…is not a place I should take you. Or indeed, anyone.”

“But you want to go.”

The startled look he gave her said everything he apparently thought he could not. Then, he looked away, eyes following the pace of the tiger’s paws. “I have not been there since that first time, as I said.” There he paused, and she could almost see how his mind sifted through a thousand years of memories, brought up only those that could make sense to her. “When I was a child, it was a place of nightmares, of monsters. Yet when I ventured there with Sif and the Warriors Three, with Loki at my side, I…in many ways, _I_ had become the monster. I brought down the nightmares upon them.” His shoulders hunched forward, voice tangled low in his throat. “Upon my own brother.”

The stars could not be seen so easily from London. Too much light pollution. Yet that first night they’d crawled out of an upstairs window onto the tiled roof, and with feet braced against a chimney stack had stared upwards at a sky both familiar and utterly alien. The air had been heavy and bitter compared to that of dry desert nights, but his fingers curled around hers like a memory as he’d told her of all that had happened since their first parting.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

He just shook his head. “I am not ashamed to accept what blame I am deserved, Jane.” The expression on his face then was lopsided, as if he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. “The first lies are always the easiest to tell. It’s only later than they become so hard.”

The tiger growled, and Jane closed her eyes. When she opened them, Thor had not moved. For some reason she could not help but think of clocks, of how the hands of second and hour moved about the same face in the same rhythm and yet could never match the other’s unit of time.

“I hope you can get him home before SHIELD does show up. I’m sure they’ve heard about the giant blue monster rampaging through Notting Hill.” Thanks to youtube and twitter, there were possibly undiscovered Amazonian tribes in the deep rainforest who had heard of Mister Frosty. “But…are you going to talk to SHIELD? Or…you know. The Avengers.”

The name still felt slightly ridiculous in her mouth, though Thor only nodded. “I will of course tell them that I am here. If they need my aid, I will be only too happy to assist. I declined to ascend the throne so I might be free to do such things.” And yet despite the simple authority in his voice, he looked down to his hands, eyes shuttered. “But I think, for now at least, I would rather…a little quiet.”

“Me, too.” She shuffled her feet a little. The tiger paced still, a kaleidoscopic movement of black and orange and white over the tense muscles beneath. “Although if you _are_ going to Jötunheimr—”

“Jane.” She could hear fondness there, but troubled lurked beneath like the rumble of new brontide. “It is not an easy place.”

“Yeah, but we wouldn’t be staying, right? Just long enough to drop off the big guy. Then bam, back home.” Breathless, suddenly, she had to pause a moment, nails digging into her palms. “Actually, all I really need is the ride. I’ll just strap on a few instruments and make some observations and that’s going to give me plenty to go on.” She pulled up short, eyes widening. “Unless…”

“Unless?”

“The Foster Theory.” Saying it aloud pinked her cheeks, but then Erik refused to call it anything else. She just had to think that while remembering his numerous post-graduate qualifications, and not his habit of going commando while positing ground-breaking theories. “It’s all about crossing the borders between worlds, right? And I don’t think we’re ever going to build a Bifröst, not without someone like Heimdall to keep an eye on it, but…” Her fingers tangled together, the only ring she wore digging deeply into the skin. “…Loki’s other paths. Like the one he showed us. It was just…well, I obviously didn’t get any readings on it. But it felt an awful lot like the anomalies caused by the convergence.”

He inclined his head, his attention still upon the sleek passage of the feline body. “It did.”

“And I guess it’s always there, right?”

“I would assume so.”

“So…” Digging teeth into her lower lip, Jane worried the thought for a little longer. “I wouldn’t mind seeing it. Again. Only this time with, you know, my instruments. And other things. Stuff. For a bit longer.” She could not quite claw back the desperation when she looked up to him this time. “It would really help my work.”

He looked both regretful and intrigued. “Jane.”

“Look, I know your father’s not my biggest fan, and your mom…” This time she did wince, hands clenching into fists as if that might substitute for punching herself in the face. “…I’m sorry. I’m just…I’m sorry.”

She hadn’t known how to deal with his grief. Her own mother had always been little more than a vague spectre in her life, too busy with her work and her friends to bother much about a daughter she had little in common with. Jane had instead grown up with something closer to two fathers, between her real one and Erik.

Now she still had not a clue how to offer him the slightest comfort in his loss. When Jane laid her hand upon his arm, she could feel the flexure of muscle beneath, warm and withheld. “It’s okay, Thor.” Her fingers tightened. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

“As am I,” he said, and though the smile did not quite reach his eyes, it was still beautiful. “But there are others who must be seen home. Come, we will discuss this with Heimdall.”

 

*****

 

Darcy’s expressive face took on a look of utter tragedy, eyes widening to those of a puppy denied a lift up onto an owner’s warm lap. “Jane, you totally ditched me last time. I think you _owe_ me an in to this party.”

Blowing out an exasperated breath, Jane reached for another box, scowled at the Magic Marker scribble that deemed it filled with _Fancy Schmancy Science Crap_. She should never have let her intern do the filing. “Darcy, I don’t even know that _I’m_ going to be welcome. I kind of sassed the King of Asgard the last time I was there, and then…well.”

Darcy appeared unmoved by the increase in volume of rummaging. “It’s not your fault, Jane.” Though she did pause then, her voice taking on an odd note that seemed almost dreamy, as if she were a small child recalling a bedtime story from the previous evening. “From the way you told it, the queen was totally a Momma Bear. She would’ve done it whether or not you were there. She probably would have done it for anyone.”

“Thanks, that makes me feel a whole lot better,” she muttered, ignoring the burn of salt at the back of her eyes. There was a loose piece of copper wire digging into one of her fingertips, but she welcomed the sharp sting of it.

“Like, has Thor ever told you he blames you for it?”

Her hands stilled, caught in the multi-coloured web of wires tangled with her fingers in the misnomered box.

“Jane? Hey, Earth to Major Jane!”

“No.” It came out as barely a croak, and she shook her head as if that would clear her throat. “ _No_. He just…no.”

“Then hey. Cool. Don’t let it get you down.” And it was utterly Darcy all over that she promptly moved on, generous lips pursing into a crimson moue. “I still wish you’d let me come see Mister Frosty though. Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I don’t think Mister Frosty stampeding through the flat could have woken you up this morning.” Sitting back on her heels, she cast a harried look about the hurricane of science that was her living room, as if she expected to find her saviour lurking behind the curtains. “Where’s Ian, anyway?”

“Out. Budgens.” Perching herself upon the arm of the sofa, Darcy thumbed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “We needed milk. And batteries.”

“…batteries?”

Jane had the feeling she would regret the question, and Darcy’s blithe answer offered no reprieve. Her eyes sparkled with a kind of mischief that reminded Jane that she’d half-woken no less than three times the night before to the sounds of odd thumps, laughter, and what she’d _thought_ was Darcy using the electric hand-beater for a late night Nigella Lawson escapade. “Yeah, we borrowed some out of your stuff last night. Emergency.”

“What did you – all right. No. Forget it.”

Drumming her heels against the side of the sofa, Darcy beamed at her. “Hey, not everyone has a boyfriend who can charge himself up like the Energiser bunny, you know? Some of us have to make do with the old school ways.”

“Darcy,” she snapped, and when it earned her a raised eyebrow, she sighed, looked back down to where her hands were still buried in the mess of electronics. The ring finger on her left hand had finally started bleeding. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

“For having a hot boyfriend? Hey, it happens. And Ian’s not bad. For an English kid. You know, he opens doors for me?”

Finally locating the missing component – _definitely_ never letting Darcy rearrange so much as the cutlery drawer ever again – Jane flicked open one of the front pockets of her satchel and stowed it safely inside. “Before or after you demand he does?” she asked idly, and Darcy kicked her feet in glee.

“After. But he still does it. _David_ never did that.” A brief cloud passed over her face, as fleeting as any of Darcy’s more sombre moods. “Seriously, though. Are you sure you’re gonna be okay? Because I have fresh batteries in my taser, at least.”

Jane had to snort. “As always.”

“Hey. Be prepared.” She leaned forward a little, tilting her head to watch with a sparrow-like curiosity as Jane secured the last of her gear. “I mean, that’s what they told me about London, yeah? _Get ready for a spot of tea and a bit of knife-crime_.”

She looked up, stared. “Darcy.”

“Yeah?” But her innocent look had too big an accompanying grin to be anything of the sort. “No, really, I could help! I know I’m not so up with all this portal stuff, but if you give me a box that goes ding I’ll totally let you know when it goes ding. Or boop. Or even beep beep beep.”

“Thank you,” she said, sudden but slow. “For everything.”

Darcy’s brow furrowed. “… _wait_ , are you like, eloping to the magical golden kingdom in the sky?”

Ignoring the twist that such words wrought low in her abdomen, Jane laughed. “The only reason why we’re here right now is because of _you_.” Rising from her knees, she stepped closer to her friend, she gave Darcy a lopsided little smile from behind the curtain of her hair. “I’d have just moped around until the sky caved in, if not for you.”

“Well, probably,” Darcy granted with casual assurance, and shrugged. “But I’m sure you would’ve picked it up again sooner or later. I mean, he’s _hot as hell_ , sure. But you almost like, _came_ when you got that page of equations to balance that one time, and then—”

Hands thrown upward like a traffic officer warding off a speeding bus, Jane backed off half a step. “ _Yeah_ , okay, I get the idea.” And before she could think better of it, Jane reached forward with both arm and enveloped Darcy in a hug.

Darcy, never one to deny a good bit of friendship, returned it with interest, and in fact dug her nails into Jane’s sweater when she made her first attempt to abort. The third time she relented, grinned like a freshly-born star. “Wow.” And then it morphed into a sly smirk. “Like, are you dying or something?”

Taking her satchel and slinging it over one shoulder Jane rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “I better go.”

“Definitely dying,” she declared with a worrying satisfaction. Then her eyes lit up. “Hey, can I have your car?”

“ _Later_ , Darcy.”

 

*****

 

“I have a boon to ask of you, Father.”

The King of Asgard, resplendent in gold robes as he stood upon the balcony overlooking the palace training yards, did not shift his gaze from where two ravens soared and circled in the sky overhead. “I see you have already assumed my answer.”

Thor reacted not to the flat disapproval of the Allfather’s tone. “I brought Jane here to confer with Heimdall on a task she will help me complete, as part of Midgard’s efforts to recover from the recent Battle of Greenwich.” And though he did not reach for her hand – it would hardly be appropriate – his great body inclined towards her, the heat and nearness of him almost as good a comfort as his touch. “But I would like to ask your permission to bring her further into Asgard once more.”

One gauntleted hand extended, and in a flurry of black feathers one of the ravens landed hard upon his arm. He did not flinch, even as the claws seemed to dig far deeper into the boiled leather than necessary. “I had the impression you wished to spend more time on Midgard, not bring your mortal companions home.”

“I’d just like to gather more data on the thin places between the worlds,” Jane offered, and her voice did not tremble even as her bones felt to be made entirely of gelatine. “…sir.”

When he turned his one eye upon her Jane regretted that the afterthought of the title sounded like she was being a smartass. She felt very small beneath his scrutiny. Though some part of her protested that she had every right to be here, as his eldest son’s treasured guest, she remembered how it had been: standing in the chamber that seemed to pulse with the life of a great tree, both within and without its scarcely-seen walls.

_He is a king of near-immortals, and you are only human._

“And what is it that you plan to _do_ with this data, once you have gathered it?” he asked, perfectly mild, and she swallowed hard.

“Apply it to my research.” Odin seemed no more impressed, and she raised her chin, forced a smile. “We know now we’re not alone, on Earth. We shouldn’t have to sit there waiting for everyone else to visit us. We need to be able to do it, too.”

“There was a reason your realm was set at the heart of the great tree; neither high nor low, neither great nor terrible,” he returned, though she sensed no condemnation nor admiration in his tone. “I rather suspect you have no idea whatsoever what such hubris will bring down upon your heads.”

Anger struck her sudden and quick, a spark to a bundle of fireworks. “Well, that’s how _you_ see it. And that’s fine. But we can’t always rely on Thor to be there to help us, when we need him. We need to be able to do something for ourselves.”

Thor had stiffened at her side, but made no motion to silence her – and, breathing hard, Jane looked nowhere but to the Allfather himself. In turn he looked only to her, still with that one watchful eye. She wondered why it felt as though the one behind the ornate patch was examining her, too.

“…very well. I will not forbid your passage into Asgard for a short period, in order to further your research. But you will not be presented to court, nor will you have free rein of the city.”

Jane had no chance to protest such judgement, nor even offer thanks; Thor was already inclining his head, one hand upon her arm. “Thank you, Father. If you will excuse us?”

Only when they were back in the cool shadows of the cloistered corridors did Jane release the breath she’d been holding, long and shaking. “You know, your Dad scares me silly.”

“I would never have guessed it, from the way you address him.”

She stopped dead, indignation like a sharp blade shoved up between her ribs. “Hey, it’s not like he was being all nice with me!”

“It is different.”

“How?” She did not move, forcing him to slow his steps, to turn back to her; she still had to half-shout her words down the corridor, the sound ricocheting from the gilt surfaces like a chorus. “Because he’s like, king of the universe?”

He came back to her, his jaw held tight. “Something like that.”

“And this from the guy who got smacked down to Earth because of the way he talked to his father.”

His face wore no discernible expression when he stood before her, the single word a low rumble of thunder. “Precisely.”

Deflating, Jane’s shoulders sagged, though within a moment she looked up, hands raising in an aborted motion. “I’m sorry. I just…I don’t know. He winds me up, I guess. It’s just…when I went through college, the department I studied in, the groups I worked with, the post-grad stuff I did…mostly everyone else was male. And shitty with it. Because I was a girl and could show them up and it pissed them off.”

The considering look he gave her was something entirely new, and not entirely unpleasant. “It is not common to be a woman of science, then?”

“Oh, it can be. In certain fields. Not so much mine.” And she couldn’t help her smirk, tainted as it was of many a bitter memory. “But I did it. And I’m here now. The closest those jerks will ever get to riding a rainbow is tripping on an empty Skittles bag.”

His smile matched hers, though he shook his head. “I know not what that means, but I will assume from your tone it is a great victory.”

“Damn right it is.” Taking a deep breath, she smoothed out her dress – the only halfway decent piece of clothing she owned, though she still suspected it hadn’t really stood up to a royal audience – and let it all go. They had better things to do. “So, can we go check out the thin place Loki showed us? And then go arrange to take the Big Frosty back to Jötunheimr?”

“The Big Frosty?”

“Well, he hasn’t got a name.” At the faint look of guilt that flickered over his broad features, Jane only just avoided putting her hands on her hips like some sorely tested fishwife. “Thor, you didn’t name him.”

“I…might have considered one.”

“And _you_ were the one insisting we had to take him home.”

“We will be taking him home!” Almost flustered, he looked away. “I simply…we should go, acquire a ship. Perhaps Fandral or Sif would care to accompany us.”

“Do they have to?”

This had him looking back, confusing warring with unease. “Not if you do not wish it. But they have been true friends to me for a very long time. I am always eased by their company.”

“I…” Feeling like an idiot, she paused, realised that she was only going to make this worse no matter how she delayed it. “How do I say this without sounding stupid? It’s just…I don’t think they like me.”

He paused, searching for something diplomatic. “They admire your skill.”

“For a mortal?”

His shoulders rose, fell on a shallow sigh. “Jane—”

“Look, if you want them to come, then that’s cool. Your town, your rules.” Shaking back her hair from her face, which felt hotter than she’d have liked, Jane bit her lip. “I’d just feel better if it was only you and me.”

“Sif would not be able to accompany you even if you wished it.” They both turned, Jane half-catching a shriek; Fandral appeared not at all apologetic, his attention fixed primarily upon Thor alone. “I am sorry to interrupt, but I had heard you had come to speak with your father again. I thought we might share a drink, perhaps a meal in the city before you left again.”

Her earlier flush crept up her cheeks when Fandral glanced over, gave her a nod and a half-distracted smile that was not his usual easily flirtation. She’d never been sure how to speak to him. But more than any insult she might have offered his friend, Thor appeared more concerned about Fandral’s actual words. His usual open expression had taken on a guarded look, eyes darkening to a blue that reminded her of a sky bruised by thunder and storm.

“Where is Sif?”

Pushing a hand back through the hair fallen over one eye, Fandral shook his head. “On an errand for the Allfather, with Volstagg.” He paused, then grimaced. “Gone to see the Collector, or so I am told.”

The moniker meant nothing to Jane, but the air seemed to thicken around Thor. She could almost taste the rising ozone. “They seek some item for the Allfather?”

“Rather to give one into his safekeeping.” Far from appearing disturbed by Thor’s odd mood, Fandral’s own expression had turned wry. “Did you not wonder what would be done with it?”

“I thought it would be kept in the vault, with all other artefacts.”

“Ah.” Something flitted across the other warrior’s face, too quick for Jane to assess, but his quick lips quirked into a half-smile that still bore no amusement whatsoever. “You do recall the legend of the infinity stones?”

“That is a myth,” Thor replied, flat and disbelieving.

“Apparently not,” Fandral returned, and raised his hands, as if such knowledge was beyond him. Given the demarcation between the sword and sorcery, Jane suspected it probably was. “The aether is one. The tesseract another. The Allfather did not think it wise to keep them so close together.”

“Yes, I see.” And his hand moved to hers, gripped it so tight she almost tried to pull it back from the bruising she suspected it would earn her. “Thank you, Fandral.”

“Do you not wish that drink?”

Thor turned back, letting go Jane’s hand in the process. “Alas, Father would not have us tarry about our own work here.” A hand moved to his shoulder, squeezed the muscle there; something in the gesture seemed to relieve the pressure in the air far more than did the wry expression he now wore. “Fear not, friend Fandral – I will return soon enough.”

The two men took their leave of one another, then; Fandral gave her a nod and a grin, but nothing more. She remembered how the same man had pressed a kiss to Darcy’s hand back in New Mexico, and then shook it off. There were more important things to worry about than her current social standing in Asgard. “Thor?” she asked, having to quicken to a pace and a half for every step of his long legs. “What’s wrong?”

He slowed half a beat, but did not stop moving. “Even Mother said it was always a legend,” he murmured, as if speaking only to himself, and Jane frowned.

“What? What’s an infinity stone, anyway?”

The looked he gave her was startled, and he drew to a halt. She almost walked into his side but he did not seem to notice. Instead he stared at her, but for a moment it was as if he stared right through her as if a pane of glass. “It is a way to remake the universe,” he whispered, and his eyes burned with quicksilver flame.

“Thor—”

“Come.” And he turned away, a golden god in the halls of his home in its nest of stars and supernovae. “There are things we must do.”


	2. 1.2: Gravitation

The afternoon they spent together on one of the airborne skiffs, making several meandering sweeps of the area Loki had shown them so many days beforehand. Thor remained very quiet the entire time, though when she asked him to hold an instrument or to take down readings for her (something that she belatedly realised would not work because she could not read his runic script), he obliged with his usual amiable grace.

Yet despite the clear skies overhead, the blue darkening to stars and spiral galaxies at its edges, Jane could taste a storm on the tip of her tongue. She had no idea what to say to him, and it seemed he himself could offer her little information on her work. A part of her wished Loki had been there just for the information he could have shared with her, though she also supposed his doing so would have been unlikely in the extreme.

Once, when she was particularly engrossed in her work, she glanced upward from one screen or another to see the lonely yearning on his face. It was turned to look out to the edge of the world, where Frigga’s longboat had fallen into eternity. In that moment Jane would have wished even Loki back into the worlds if only to take that expression from his face.

They shared a quiet meal out on one of Thor’s balconies upon their return. Jane had never thought herself exactly a vegan, but the relentless protein of the Asgardian diet meant she picked somewhat, and felt considerable relief when the dessert consisted almost entirely of fresh fruits. She couldn’t readily identify any of them, but the sheer pleasure Thor seemed to take in watching her attempt to eat what strongly resembled a pomegranate crossed with a mandarin made it all worth it. Especially when he came to stand behind her, hands warm over hers as he guided her fingers to the best way of dissembling the fist-sized fruit. His fingers had been very warm against her lips where he had pressed the segments between them, the small hard core splitting in a sweet burst when he whispered that she should crush it quick.

After dinner they rose to return home. It seemed the usual manner of traversing the rainbow bridge to the Observatory was on horseback, but ever since the first time, when Jane had confessed to barely even having _seen_ a horse in the flesh before, they had chosen to walk instead. Thor tended to offer to carry her as he flew, but the manner of transport Darcy tended to refer to as _Air Mjölnir_ didn’t hold as much appeal for Jane as the song of the kaleidoscope beneath her feet. For his own part Thor did not appear to mind the walk, even though this time he had slung over his shoulder a pack that Jane had been unable to drag across his chamber floor, let alone lift.

“Hi, Heimdall,” she said as she entered the Observatory; the guardian nodded his horned head, and though his lips did not move in a smile she still felt the warmth of his golden eyes upon her.

“Good eve to you, Jane Foster. I trust you have enjoyed your time with us?”

“Sure did.” Her own smile brightened, hand resting upon her satchel in the way another woman’s hand might have curved about a pregnant belly, thoughtful of the child’s potential within. “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me. I really appreciate it.”

“You are always very welcome.”

 “Heimdall.” He turned his gaze towards Thor, who nodded his own head in greeting. “When we return with the frost beast, will you then send us to Járnvid?”

His expression did not change. “You would be better served in the vicinity of Útgarðr.”

“This is a wild creature,” Thor returned with equanimity though Jane could see something shifting in his eyes, like a low pressure system gathering thunder clouds about its centre. “I believe it would be happier away from the remains of the city, near the Ironwood.”

“It is not a place where one should tarry.”

“And so we shall not.” One hand shifted to his hip, fingertips brushing lightly over the shortened haft of the hammer hung there. “But for the meantime we shall return to Midgard in order to prepare Mánagarm for his journey home.”

Only the faintest frown in that otherwise immobile face. “ _Mánagarm_ ,” he repeated, slow and careful, and Jane turned to poke Thor in the chest with one accusing finger even as she couldn’t withhold a laugh.

“So you _did_ name it!”

Shamefaced and smiling with it, Thor shrugged his great shoulders. “I could not resist.” Then he reached forward, grasped the gatekeeper about one vambraced forearm as he did the same, a solid shake of comrades-in-arms. “Good Heimdall, I thank you for your aid.”

His face had again resumed its impassive state, though Jane did not think his disapproval had evaporated. Yet she had no time to ask after it, for he only nodded. “It is given where it is due,” he said, and turned so that he might ascend the dais where his sword awaited its press home. “Good journey to you, Prince of Asgard, Dr. Jane Foster.”

Thor’s hand curled about hers and they stepped together nearly as one, her stride still so much shorter than his. With a flash of light they were set upon the ways between worlds, her gear gleefully snatching all the data it could from the very air around them. Heimdall had thoughtfully deposited them just down the street, and aside from one startled dogwalker they managed to get inside with no further incident. Jane immediately set about downloading the reams of information she’d generated, but even as she flicked back through the first of her cards, she glanced upward. Thor had settled thoughtfully upon the couch, staring wordlessly at the silent television.

“So that was kind of weird.”

He glanced over to her, eyes bearing a faint hint of confusion. “Weird?”

“That conversation you just had with Heimdall. About…what did you call it? The Ironwood?”

“Yes.”

“He...doesn’t want us to go there.” Still Thor did not appear to react to the unspoken question beneath, and she pushed one button a little too hard. “So why do you want to go?”

“I wish to speak with someone.”

She wondered if Thor was always this difficult to have a serious conversation with. No wonder Frigga had implied that ninety percent of Loki and Thor’s childhood exchanges had been outright arguments. “I thought you’d only been to Jötunheimr that one time. How do you know anyone who lives there?”

“Angrboða once lived in Asgard.”

The foreign word tasted like ice upon her tongue. Jane had never thought ice to even have any taste of its own at all. “ _Angrboða_.”

“A seeress, of a kind. She was not counted amongst the court, but her skills were sought after by nobles and commoners alike.” What he added next he did with great reluctance, as if he regretted the words even before he spoke them. “Loki…Loki spent a good deal of time with her, as I understand it.”

“Ah.”

A frown thinned even his generous lips to nearly nothing. “I do not know the exact circumstances, whether it was something she did or something Loki said, but she drew Father’s curiosity. They then…disagreed, over some matter or another. She was banished to Jötunheimr for it.”

“That seems kind of harsh. Banishing someone to a place like Jötunheimr.”

Shifting his weight amongst the cushions, Thor took so long about his answer that Jane wondered if she would have to throw something at him in order to bring him back to Earth. Yet even as he began to sift through the great bag he had lugged back from Asgard, he gave her something in a voice both quiet and strange. “She was in fact birthed from its forests.”

“She was a _frost giant_?” Jane asked, startled. “And nobody _noticed_?”

“The same might be said of Loki.”

The flat note to his voice ought to have been a warning, and yet her thoughts moved too quick to heed it. “But that was a spell your Dad cast, wasn’t it?” she asked, brow creasing as her mind began a frantic search through what she remembered of Thor’s earlier stories of his brother’s dramatic fall from grace. “How does that even work, anyway? Was it like, a glamour – you know, just a layer of molecules overlying the surface to project an image of its choosing, or did it actually alter him on a molecular level? Was he like you just on the outside, or on the inside too?”

It was not a fair question to ask of a person who had always been more warrior than sorcerer, she knew, especially given the circumstances, but even though he met her question with uneasy silence she did not look away. Finally, he released a slow breath, drawing his hands back from the gear he had begun to extract from the bag. “I do not know the details, Jane. I would tell you if I could. But it was never something that we discussed overmuch.”

“So what, your brother’s adopted and from another race and was lied to his whole life about it, but your dad doesn’t think that’s worth having a talk about even after the news drives him absolutely bugfuck crazy?”

She had gone too far and she knew it. “Apparently not,” he said with low calm, and looked down to where his hands now sat clenched upon his thighs. Jane sighed, wondering if she’d ever learn to take her foot out of her mouth. It was with gentle reluctance that she rounded the couch, sat hesitant at his side.

“…so, she’s like, a witch,” she said, even though the subject change felt weak even to her ears. “I thought magic wasn’t your thing.”

Yet Thor took it gratefully, nodding as he returned to ordering what he had brought back with them. “It isn’t. But there is something I should like to question her about.”

“Can _I_ ask her questions?”

This did give him pause. “I am not sure you would overmuch appreciate her answers. She was never known for her helpfulness.”

“And yet you’re going to ask her something.”

“There are few others I might seek this answer from,” he said, his expression very bleak for all he cast her a wan smile. “Fear not, Jane, I rather suspect she will not aid me in this. But I feel I must try. After all, circumstances have led me to her door. I will take that as meaning that I should at least make use of them in this way.”

_Fate doesn’t always do these things just to be nice to us_ , she thought, but did not say aloud. “So,” she said instead, and bit her lip. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Yes.”

Cross-legged on the couch now, Jane laced her fingers beneath her chin and took in the pile of borrowed gear spread out on the coffee table. Given the sheer volume of fur and leather, and the number of layers it would surely mean they’d be wearing, she doubted they’d feel the chill even if Thor took her for a jaunt to the summit of Mount Everest.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Thor,” she said without thinking, and gave a half-hearted chuckle. The silence it earned her sat like a stone in her gut until she dared to glance up. The look he gave her showed no offense, but rather a strange kind of recognition that crawled beneath her skin like curious termites, hacking away at what she thought to be true.

“…Thor?”

He blinked, turned his face away so that she could not see his eyes. “You sounded like him.”

Jane had nothing left to say after that. In these days there could be only one _him_ in the royal vocabulary. And even in the warmth of her mother’s London flat, she shivered.

 

*****

 

It surprised her not one bit that SHIELD had apparently made an application to London Zoo to take the frost beast from their care, on the basis that they were the only governmental organisation to have any idea of how to deal with extraterrestial lifeforms. “Shows what they know,” the keeper had muttered, shuffling the last of her paperwork. “You should have met those guys from Wales that were here yesterday. Christ.”

“Wales?”

But Thor had already made his own arrangements, apparently having taken extensive advice from the master of horse at the palace and his own long experience in hunting wild and feral beasts of alien worlds. Jane still watched with no small apprehension as they allowed him into the quarantine enclosure, Mjölnir at his hip and hands filled with a strange contraption that seemed a larger version of an equine harness. Various staff held position at tactical high vantage points; the set-up reminded her uncomfortably of the opening scenes of _Jurassic Park_. It didn’t help that their tranquiliser guns were apparently loaded with what the lead keeper assured her was enough carfentanyl to fell an entire herd of elephants.

“It won’t kill it, though?” she asked the woman at her side, who shook her head while adjusting the high ponytail of her dark hair.

“Hard to say. It seemed to recover well enough from the dose it got down at Silvertown.” Then she gave a short sharp chuckle, raised an eyebrow. “Of course if we have to sedate it, one of you lot would have to give it the diprenorphine once you get it home.”

Jane watched as Thor finished circling the creature, who had yet to stand up from where it had apparently been sleeping before their arrival. Its tail, tipped with the spiked knob of bone, twitched where it curled about its great body. “…I vote he does it.”

“Fair enough.”

Yet despite all precautions taken to the contrary, it appeared Thor did not expect to do any fierce or furious animal wrangling. He instead squatted down before its face so he might pat its nose, as if it were a hunting dog waiting to be given the scent. Jane had to shake her head, wondering who was the crazier one: Thor just for being Thor, or her for only liking him all the more for it.

“So you still don’t know if it’s male or female?”

The keeper shook her head. “It’s hard to get close enough to tell. And once it was decided it was going home, we didn’t want to cause an international incident by accidentally overdosing the thing before the crown prince of another planet got it back to where it came from.” Still her disappointment showed clear, eyes moving with a critical gleam over the creature’s flank. “But yeah, it just…it’s not obvious. It seems a bit like a bird, in that the reproductive organs are tucked away inside. Except with birds it’s for streamlining; I’m assuming with these guys it’s a climate thing.”

Considering what Thor had told her about a world made of ice and snow, Jane couldn’t argue that. “I guess so.”

In the quarantine enclosure, Thor had apparently moved on from the initial pleasantries to encouraging the frost beast to stand so that he might secure the harness about its shoulders and upper thorax. The barrels of the tranquiliser guns never once wavered from their targets, but Thor and his newest companion seemed oblivious to all but each other. She could in fact hear him speaking to the creature, though his voice was too low to make out actual words; its own rumbling returns made it sound like two merry thunderstorms at play with one another.

She hadn’t realised how tense she was until he raised his head, one hand upon the looped end of the harness, which he had secured about Mjölnir’s haft. The other he stretched up in a wave, and when she raised her own in return she noticed for the first time the crescents of her nails embedded in the pale flesh. The creature’s tongue lolled out as its mouth opened in what might have been an exceptionally sloppy grin. 

“Coming, Jane?”

Happy as it seemed to be in its harness, Jane pursed her lips. “Let’s just get one thing clear: we are _not_ riding that thing.”

The very idea of it made him both light up and almost pout at the same time. “Why not?”

“ _Thor_.”

Though he seemed willing enough to surrender that one, he nodded again at the double gates of the enclosure. “But no, do come in. It’s perfectly safe.”

“Better you than me,” the keeper muttered, but once Jane had pulled on the last two layers of furs and leathers, she unlocked the gates and entered with her. The creature perked up at the new scents, but neither Thor nor the keeper displayed any unease. Given the woman likely had had training that allowed her to approach all manner of large wild animals should it be required, Jane supposed she could trust her instincts. She still had to repress a flinch when the other woman laid a flat hand upon its snout, the gentle motion echoing a faint but true smile.

“Bye, baby.”

“Thank you for looking after him so well, Rachel Fullerton.”

Jane didn’t think she was imagining the faint blush on the woman’s weathered cheeks. She supposed she could hardly blame her; Thor seemed to have that effect on a lot of people, male or female. “It was my pleasure, believe me.”

Then his free hand curled tight about hers, and nothing else seemed to matter. “Heimdall, open the Bifröst.”

 

*****

 

Thor had given her some stories about the realm named Jötunheimr, though when the light of the Bifröst scattered and they were left standing upon its impression burned into the snow, she did not think she had understood what _land of ice and snow_ had truly meant. Even in her cocoon of fur and wool and leather the wind cut through her like knives, her breath so strongly stolen so that it came only in short, sudden puffs. Her own arms wrapped about her in a parody of a lover’s embrace, and for the first time she began to truly doubt that science could ever make something like this worth it.

But the mere thought of her data had her foraging in her satchel, for not the first time wondering at how the well-fitted and lined leather gloves still allowed her fingers considerable dexterity. Within moments, the cold all but forgotten, Jane had settled to organising her instruments, leaving Thor to set about loosing the almost freakishly calm Mánagarm from his harness.

At one particularly colourful string of curses, Jane glanced up from her calibrations. “Is something wrong?” she asked, giving the creature a wary look. It just rumbled unhappily, nudging Thor in a manner it likely thought gentle. It still very nearly pushed him over on his ass.

“Mánagarm doesn’t want to go,” he said, pressing back at the creature’s nose; this time it _did_ shove him over. Jane barely suppressed a laugh at the accusing glare the two of them then shared.

“I _told_ you that you shouldn’t have named it,” she said, and looked back down to her gear. “I’m not helping. I’m quite fine over here.”

After a few more minutes of muffled arguing with the beast, Thor apparently gave up and began to walk towards her. From shuddering of the snow beneath her, it was clear the beast lopped after him. Jane raised her hands, waved him to a halt. “Whoa. _No_. Go back to where you came from.”

Thor turned around, found the creature beaming at him with all a puppy’s glee. “Mánagarm. You must go. This is your _home_.”

Much as Jane doubted it could understand a word Thor said, the look upon its face was almost pitiful. Then her meter beeped and she frowned down at it, leaving Thor to go about his self-appointed mission. When she looked up a few minutes later, Thor’s expression bore all the signs of tragedy, and he stood utterly alone. She had not even heard the creature leave.

“Are you okay?”

He shook his head, looking almost dazed. “I will be fine.”

“Why are you so sure it’s a boy, anyway? Rachel said she had no idea what gender it was, and she spent longer with it than you did.”

“I do not know.” Shaking himself like a dog, Thor gave her a lopsided smile, brushed some more snow out of his hair. “But it does not matter. Mánagarm is home safe, and we have work to do. The Járnvid is close.”

She frowned, shading her eyes with one hand as she sketched a full circle about their surroundings. “I don’t see a forest.”

“It is not a forest in the traditional sense.”

The journey through the snow could hardly be called a nice walk in the woods. Even with the widened soles of her shoes, she struggled in the depth of it. It didn’t help that she’d never been a fan of the mountains. She also suspected she would not have got very far at all without Thor to help her through the worst of the drifts. The possibility of hidden crevasses and ice bridges she very determinedly did not think about.

Sometime later they summited a small ridge, paused at its height in order that they might look downwards. To the west Jane could see a glacial valley, filled with the stark beauty of an icefall cascading down from the mountain into the cwm below. Towering columns of ice almost seemed to sway in the distance as he helped her down a vague trail. She suspected this was the “forest” the name spoke of, though the iron aspect she couldn’t quite explain. Just ahead lay a small vertical cave slashed into the exposed black rock of the lateral moraine; as they drew closer a figure emerged as if to greet them.

Despite never having been sure what she had expected of a witch, the woman before them was not quite it. A frost giantess, Thor had said. But she stood no taller than Thor himself, and was slender as a reed. Short dark hair cupped the curves of her skull while glittering red eyes gazed sharp from above cut-glass cheekbones. There existed about her more than a faint hint of Loki, and Jane had to wonder if perhaps they were related. Angrboða looked more his sister than Thor did his brother – save for the blue skin, and its meandering ridges of curve and circle.

“Son of Odin. Lord of Storm,” she said with a formal grace, as if beginning a recital of kenning and title. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I should think you already know.”

A laugh broke free of her lips, high and lovely, ice falling into rushing water. “Come, what would be the fun in that?”

“It is not the seeking of amusement that brings me to your door, my lady.”

“I am no lady,” she returned, and gave him a sly look from beneath her lashes. “Which makes it all the more of a pity that you do not seek some entertainment before my hearth.”

“May we speak with you?”

“We?” For the first time Angrboða turned that crimson gaze upon Jane. Beneath it she felt as notable as an insect in a belljar, waiting for first the chloroform and then the mounting pins that would follow. “Does that delightful little morsel on your arm have some words of her own, then?”

“That depends on whether you’ve got anything worth saying yourself.”

When she smiled now Jane saw very white teeth, like the flash of exposed bone. “Ah, there’s some fire to this one. They do blaze _so_ very brightly, these little mortals! But then they burn through their lives so very swiftly, too.”

Thor’s tone brooked no further debate, forbidding and flat. “That is not why we have come.”

“No?” Curious now, Angrboða drifted closer across the snow; she left no footprints in her wake. “But then I suppose you might speak to the lovely Iðunn, should you wish to do something about that dreadfully short lifespan of hers.” Tilting her head sideways as if seeking some distant sound, her voice turned sing-song soft. “I can hear her cells crumbling to dust even as we stand here together. It’s rather a lovely melody, if somewhat cruel in that its end will come all too soon.”

Jane spoke through numb lips, but every word rang clear and true. “He just said that’s not why we’re here.”

Though she seemed not at all disturbed by Jane’s tone Angrboða still took three light steps backward, drifting closer to the unnatural gloom of the cave cut into the black wall. The long fingers of one hand, bare of ring or glove, danced light to her lips, fluttered there with mocking pity. “Oh, did you not know there are ways and means to elevate one above one’s birth?” Those scarlet eyes burned with false sympathy, laid over her skin like molten steel. And then she turned to Thor, gave a little sigh. “How very unkind of you to not give her that hope, Odinson.”

“Iðunn’s gifts are not mine to give,” Thor replied without inflection, though his hand lingered near the faint spark of Mjölnir at his hip; her ravenous gaze followed the movement, the tip of her oddly pink tongue lingering upon her lips.

“But they might be.” Her long lashes now glittered with snow. “If you were king.”

“Not even the king may command the lady of the orchards.”

“So the king might _say_ ,” she replied, and looked again to Jane. _Goats and banquet tables_ , her voice seemed to whisper into her mind, and Jane came over both hot and cold at the same very moment, impossible as it seemed.

_I never wanted to live forever. But to think me less, just for where I was born—_

 “But come, then, let us not quibble over things you wish not to speak of.” One hand rose, flicking dark nails over darker hair as she curved her smile at him once more. “Tell me instead what you desire of me.”

“A story.”

“To tuck you into bed with?” With a throaty chuckle the witch leaned back against the black stone of her abode, tilting herself towards him alone. Jane had to half-turn away, her hands turned to fists even as Angrboða laughed one more time. “And yet there are far more interesting things one might do, in my bed.”

Despite the open leer of her grin, Thor’s features remained expressionless. “There are rumours, as to why you were cast out of Asgard.”

“The rumours were naught to do with my prowess between the sheets, I must assure you.”

“I wish to know if those rumours were true.”

With a snort she straightened upward, hips no longer canted in sensual inviting curve. Instead she opened her arms wide, furs draped from the long slender bones of her arms. “And here I stand, in the skin and the land of my birth. What more need you, to say that I am of Jötunheimr?”

Thor kept his eyes only upon her face. “That is not the rumour of which I speak,” he said, and she rolled her eyes, letting her arms fall before rearranging the artful fall of her robes.

“There were a good many rumours of me, Odinson. As there were of your brother, Loki. Tell me, how does the little wretch these days?”

Though he stood with his spine very straight anyone could see how it then bowed, nearly broken, beneath the weight of the truth. “My brother is dead.”

“Oh? Oh, _dear_.” One long finger tapped against pursed lips; she appeared more surprised than distressed. “I should have thought him far too clever to bother with anything quite so mundane as all that. Perhaps I overestimated that skill within him.” Then with a wave of one hand, she seemed to dismiss the matter altogether. “But then it was always far too much to have come from his supposed blood, son of the Allmother or no.”

“You will not speak of her,” he growled, and it sent a frisson of fear through Jane even though it was not directed at her. Angrboða only snorted.

“Oh, but then _she_ is the reason he came to me! Frigga had much to teach him, of course. But there came a time when he outstripped even her. Only I could give him what he needed.” That cruel amusement returned to her lovely face, smile both coy and sly. “Do you ever wonder why?”

“Loki’s parentage is no longer a mystery,” he said with no anger or misery, and Angrboða gave a delicate laugh that curdled Jane’s blood.

“It never was, to me.”

“And yet you never told him of it.”

“Why should I have risked driving him away from me? Because it drove him from you his family, did it not?” At Thor’s shocked look, she rolled her eyes. “We do not receive much news, this far into the woods of a barren land, but I had heard tell of his madness. It did not take much to decipher the why.”

When he turned his face away, his profile pressed gaunt and pale against the blue-riddled skies. “I do not wish to speak of Loki.”

“Why ever not? I cannot imagine your fellows have much sympathy for the mad prince, dead or no.” Thor’s hand did tighten about Mjölnir this time, but Angrboða paid it no heed. Instead she sidled closer to the darkness of the cave, pressed a hand into the darkness. “Come, crush a cup of wine with me! We could discuss how he last made you look the fool. I always did rather enjoy those tales.”

“There was an artefact in your possession.”

The relentless pursuit of his quarry intrigued her, though Jane could see Angrboða masked how deep that intrigue truly went. “There are many yet,” she said with her offhand grace, and Thor’s jaw tightened.

“A blade.” When she said nothing, he went on in a way that sounded as if he spoke between clenched teeth. “Said to cut through more than flesh.”

“Oh. _Oh_ , I see.” Folding her arm over her chest, she gave him a considering look. “And what do you intend to cut with this blade, my lord of thunder?”

“I think you know.”

“I think you do not.” Her smile this time could be named anything but kind. “Though it matters not a whit. The blade is not in my possession.”

The words were mild enough, but Jane doubted the witch could have missed the rumble of distant thunder that accompanied them. “Loki was a fine liar long before your paths crossed. Yet I should think at your table he but sharpened that skill.”

“You speak truly enough, oh Son of Thunder. But then, just this once, so do I.” Now she truly did laugh, her scorn as bitter as the frigid air between them. “You do not even know its name, do you.”

It was not the first time she had ever felt out of her depth when in his company, but the unnatural silver sheen to his eyes turned her knees to water. Jane tightened her grip on the satchel’s strap and yet could not look away from him. The air about them all held a taste of storm, and his voice was its low herald as he said, soft as spring rains, “Would I be here if I did?”

Still Angrboða showed no distress, one hand light upon a narrow hip as she pursed her generous lips once more. “And you would not ask your father?” she asked, and then threw her head back with a laugh that resembled more strongly the sound of a throat being cut. “Oh, but no, of course you would not!”

The first reply Thor made was not even words, rather just displeasure that rolled deep in his chest. “Do you intend to tell me or not?”

“And what price do you offer for my services? _Her_ , perhaps?”

Jane stiffened, hands still buried deep in her sleeves; if they hadn’t been, she suspected she might have made a rather obscene gesture. “I’m not for sale!”

Her vehemence seemed not to impress Angrboða, who met it only with clear disdain. “Which is all for the better, seeing as I do not want you.” Clicking her nails together, she tossed her head, rolled her eyes like a filly never for the breaking. “Some of us might like to collect mortals for fleeting amusement, but I have far more interesting quarry to hunt down.”

The grinding of his teeth made her think of bone beneath the gleam of an uru-headed hammer. “Then what _do_ you wish of me?”

“I do not know.” His eyes widened with something like shock and fury, though Angrboða just rolled her eyes in return. “But never mind. I am sure I shall have some need to call on you again, thunderer. Especially if that bull-headed nature of yours does bring you what you seek.”

The air pulsed with his displeasure; Jane could feel it chasing through her blood, raising the small hairs on the back of her neck even through the heaviness of her coats. Yet Thor did not turn away. She could not even be sure he knew what retreat was.

“And what is it that I seek?”

“The knife Sullt.” This time she did not smile, and the grave cast of her peculiar features seemed to make it worse than any smile she had shared thus far. “There is but one hand that holds it long.”

Jane could sense the passage of some knowledge between the two, a shared but unspoken realisation; a strong electrical charge seemed to dance upon the air when he let out a slow breath, a name resting heavy on its sparking edge. “Hela.”

“Indeed.”

It meant little to Jane, but when she tested the name in her mind her thoughts shied away from its very sound, as if it were made of dark and shadow. “And how came you by Hela’s knife?” Thor asked. The Jötunn only shrugged those thin shoulders beneath her fine furs.

“That is between me and the lady.” Again, her dark lips twisted in a knowing smirk, long fingers moving to press lightly against her throat. “As would any bargain you might strike with her.”

Jane felt very cold. It did not change when Angrboða turned to her, one perfectly curved eyebrow arched high.

“And you, child? Is there something you would ask of me?”

Much as she had thought the words would catch in her throat, she spoke them with no tremor at all. “Without knowing the price first? No way.”

“Far more sensible than our not would-be king, here,” she granted with an odd generosity, and turned a knowing look upon him. “But then, he does have _so_ much more life to waste than you.” Even as the truth dug its talons into her heart, she brightened, spoke with a disarming ease. “So now that our business is concluded, would you care to come in for that wine I spoke of?”

In a tone he suggested he thought it anything but, he replied, “Your offer is most gracious, but we must decline. We will be returning to Asgard now.”

“So be it,” she said, and dropped low into a curtsey so perfect as to be entirely mocking. “I will call on you one eve, Son of Odin. And I shall look forward to it.”

She held that pose even when Thor took Jane’s arm and began to hurry her away, too fast for her to keep her own footing. The further they moved from her cave the lower her feet sank into the powder, until he was all but dragging her. Only when she could move under something like her own power did she find voice enough to throw out the furious thoughts roiling in her mind.

“What the _hell_ was that?”

“Jane.” She kept driving on through the snow, even as his arm fell upon her shoulder. “ _Jane_. I am sorry.”

She turned around, eyes bright with fury. “You’re not,” she said, arms thrust out to keep her teetering balance. “You got what you wanted without even knowing what you paid, and you’re _happy_ about it!”

And he did not deny it. She did not see how he could, when it was written all over his face. “I do not wish to discuss this now.”

Hurt fought an ignoble battle with fury, which won far too easily for comfort. “Then why bring me here?”

“You wished to come.”

“Not for this!”

His jaw tightened in the silence that followed. When she looked at him she felt as though he might be made of gold-burnished stone, as strange and distant as the great statues that lined the cloistered corridors of his home. She supposed much later that that was why the anger continued to bubble up out of her like so much venomous magma.

“So is it true, then? That there really _is_ something that could make me live as long as you will?”

He stayed silent so long she thought he would not answer at all; her fists balled in her gloves, itching with the need to strike some reaction out of him, for all she knew violence would never get her the answers she wanted, even if she could actually have hurt him.

And then he sighed. “Iðunn’s golden apples are purported to increase our longevity, insuring our health. It is said that others who partake of them may in turn live beyond their own allotted time spans.”

His own father had said that mortals were particularly renowned for their habit of dying, and for all he had worked against Odin’s will to save her life, this he had never once mentioned. “And you weren’t going to say anything,” she said, dull, and Thor let out an exasperated breath.

“It is a _legend_. I have never known it to be true. As it is, I suspect our lifespans would be as long as they were whether or not she shared her harvests with us.” Pressing one hand to a temple, he added coldly: “And as I said to Angrboða: Iðunn’s gifts are not mine to give. I am not king. It is not my place to make such demands, nor offer false hope to those who do not deserve to be hurt by it.”

Shame burned high in her cheeks, her tongue very thick. Dropping her head, she fought back bile. She didn’t want to know if she’d always been this quick to judge. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, eyes burning. “It’s not…I didn’t want…but I just…”

“No, I…I am sorry, Jane.” Stepping close, he took both her gloved hands in his own, pressed his lips unhappily together. “I should not have brought you near someone like her. But it was the only way I could see to come to Jötunheimr. To ask Angrboða this question.”

Again, sudden temper got the better of her basic common sense. “And now you’re in her debt and you don’t even know what _for_ ,” she snapped, wrenching her hands back. Thor’s expression darkened. But then he’d always seemed another person when it came to speaking of his brother.

“I believe it to be worth it,” he said with non-negotiable calm, and she gave a strangled little laugh.

“For what? A name? Of a _knife_? What does this knife even do?”

“I am not certain.”

She turned away, and found that her feet were moving, taking her away from him. “And you just bargained away some unknown favour for it? On some false hope? You’re the Prince of Asgard! People depend on you! Are you _crazy_?”

“Jane—”

She just kept walking. It was an idiot thing to do, but the slap of her satchel against her thigh was like the beat of a military tattoo, keeping her feet moving in stubborn time. Floating above it was the faint memory of a conversation of days ago. Thor had spoken of a convergence. Of things that met for only the briefest of moments, and then passed one another by for another five thousand years.

But only one would live that long.

“Jane!”

She did not turn back, shouted her words to the blurred blue-white snow before her. “Just leave me alone! For a _minute_! God!”

He did not say anything more, and all she could hear was the crunch of driven snow beneath her boots. The going was slow, her feet sinking first ankle-deep, and then up to her knees. Jane pushed forward all the same, fierce not so much in her determination but rather just bullheaded stubbornness. The inevitable came later than she’d thought it would; she floundered upon a precipice, arms cartwheeling in frantic alarm. And then she fell forward, leaving an inelegant snow angel upon a foreign world.

With a curse she braced her hands, rolled over onto her back. From here she could do little more but stare at an alien sky. It arched above her like a cracked crystalline matrix, as if the Jötnar lived inside the facets of a dirty sapphire. Cold seeped through even the thick furs, and she splayed out like an explorer floating upon quicksand, her every breath a frost-thickened puff of smoke upon the thin air.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she said. There was no other sound save for the faint crack and settle of the seracs of the distant icefall, and the taunting whisper of half-settled snow beneath her motionless body. She felt as though she lay upon the sea rather than solid ground.

She did not look for Thor. She did not want to.

Closing her eyes, she knew there were things she could do. It would be the work of moments to dig out the gear in her bag, and then could generate more data to take back home. But there were no stars to see from down here. The atmosphere was thin enough that she sometimes felt as though she could not breathe, and yet the sky seemed heavy with condensate. The longer she lay still the worse her light-headedness seemed to become, a headache gathering force behind her eyes, in her ears. She swallowed hard, and it only seemed to make it worse. Despite a sudden urge to sit up, the energy necessary to do so seemed quite beyond her.

Her chest still moved in quick movements, but her breathing felt shallow, almost pointless. A fit coughing wracked her with alarming speed, forcing her upright, but she could not catch her breath. On her hands and knees she felt as though she had finally found some oxygen with which to breathe, but the ache of her head had grown worse.

Only when the coughing ended did she hear the growling instead.

Jane whipped around so fast she went sprawling on her back. Wide as her eyes had opened, what stood before her now seemed to fill the entire world: a wolf – but one like no other wolf she had ever seen. Instead it resembled a polar bear in size, the pale blue of its fur matted and shaggy. It stepped forward on large feet with wide-splayed toes, the crystalline claws shaped to match a raptor’s killing blade. And the face held an elongated shape, lips drawn back in a fierce snarl. Inside the teeth formed a double layer, a mouth filled with blades and bone that were cutting in front, grinding in the back. In the gleam of the narrowed red eyes the spittle condensing upon the air seemed to take on a demonic taint.

“Oh _shit_.”

She turned, all instincts demanding she flee. Yet to the left stood another one; to the right, two more. Another turn and she started to lose count, numbers jumbling up in her thoughts like so much tangled string. Though they were like no other wolf she had seen in New Mexico, it seemed they were the same in at least one respect – they hunted in packs.

And they would not say no to a bit of fresh meat.

She rose to her feet painfully slow, though her eyes moved in rapid count over those few of the pack she could actually see. Trembling hands fixed upon the strap of her satchel; it could serve as a ballista, of a sort, though she doubted she had the strength to so much as even bruise one of these heavily-muscled creatures.

Standing now at their centre, her heart beat as fast as that of a cornered rabbit. Yet a silence almost entire hung heavy upon the air, save for the rush of blood in her ears and the harmonic rumble that made together a dirge chorus from all of the pack. She was utterly alone in this place. Much as she could shout for Thor, it felt as though something hung in a terrible delicate balance. One single shout might destroy everything, and end her with it.

A cry shattered the deathly quiet, and Jane’s heart stopped dead in her chest. Then one leaped for her and she exploded into action, swinging blindly before going down in a flurry of fur. The momentum of her satchel twisted her like a broken kaleidoscope, all breath pushed out of her lungs in one great whoosh when her ribs protested the heavy way she landed. Her ankle was only protected from a nasty wrench by the thick leather and lining of her borrowed boots.

Death felt to be but a crush of teeth away, and yet its jaws never closed upon her throat. Instead a shriek cut through the air, matched by an unearthly howl that turned her skin to ice. Yet still she scrabbled for purchase, muscles screaming at the exertion as she forced herself to find her feet, half-blinded by panic and the snow dusting her face. A terrible crunch turned her stomach, and then a hand fell upon her shoulder. She looked upward, dread warring with the fierce relief of recognition.

“Thor!”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, but his eyes had already moved to the tableau before them. Jane followed, and felt her heart tighten with something she could not name joy, could not name fear; it rather seemed a bastard construct of both, taking pleasure in blood even as it flinched away from the way it splattered across the driven white snow.

Sif and Fandral formed together this terrible beauty with the two lean warriors moving in tandem, dervishes whirling about some unseen but shared centre of the double-bladed sword, the fierce rapier. Only three of the beasts remained standing, and as Jane watched one leaped towards them. A scream wedged in her throat, sharp enough to tear it in two. Yet with scarcely a glance in its direction Sif caught it upon her shield, thrust it back as if it weighed no more than a Chihuahua. She then spun on one heel, taking the other in the neck before it could get the upper hand on Fandral; he dealt to the last with a blow driven low into the steaming entrails of its gut.

“Oh my _God_.”

“Jane—”

She pushed away his hands, tears half-frozen upon her eyelids before they could even fall. “God, I’m such a fucking idiot!” And she sat down hard in the snow, gloved hands over her face. “I’ve seen enough stupid horror movies to know I shouldn’t have run off like that.”

For a long moment he did not speak. Then he moved close, arm awkward about her shoulders as he knelt at her side. “I should not have been so harsh with you,” he murmured into her ear, the warmth of his breath tickling against the hair knocked free from her hat. “It was not your fault. I should never have put you in this position.”

“Thor, what were you even doing here, in the Ironwood?”

They both glanced up to find Sif standing before them, sword already sheathed in her shield; two steps behind, Fandral cleaned his rapier with a golden cloth. Thor’s lips tightened.

“It does not matter. We shall return home now.”

She frowned. “To Asgard? Or are you returning again to Midgard?”

“I…to Asgard.” His generous face stood shuttered, betraying nothing at all of what lay within. “There is something I must ask my father.”

 

*****

 

Upon their arrival back at Heimdall’s observatory, Jane blinked to see that Volstagg waited there to greet them. Two small children were attached to either hand, one a boy with bright red curls that were so like the rotund man’s own that he must be his son, though he was reed-like and wiry. The little girl, who looked scarcely more than the age of a kindergartener, was by contrast crowned with a mass of gold, flowers woven into the curls framing a round cherub’s face.

Volstagg caught her staring, and his grin grew impossibly wider. “My youngest,” he announced, voice booming about the chamber. “This is Gunnhild, and this Rolfe.” To emphasise, he raised one hand, then the other. The boy looked ill at ease, though the little girl beamed in a way that reminded her oddly of Darcy. “Rolfe wanted to welcome Thor home, and Gunnhild just never says no to a journey down to the Observatory!”

Thor moved over to the boy with scarcely a second thought. Down on one knee before him, he grinned, his shoulders still dusted with snow. “Hello, Rolfe. I haven’t seen you in some time.”

“Hello, sir.” His face wore both wide eyes and a broad grin, through the small body trembled with that odd mixture of terror and elation that spoke of hero worship and awe. “Father says you are adventuring in the realms, and we may not see you in Asgard for some time.”

His face turned very grave, voice rumbling with sincere promise. “If I am needed, I will come. Do not ever believe otherwise – Mjölnir and I are, as ever, at the service of Hliðskjálf and all those who reside in the great city of Glaðsheimr and beyond.”

To illustrate his point, Thor unhooked the great hammer from his belt, extended her towards the boy. After a solemn moment, the boy reached forward, rested a hand upon the facet carved with the symbol of her master.

“She is always so _warm_ ,” he breathed, and Thor laughed.

“She is. But then, she has always liked you. You will be a fine warrior, Rolfe.”

He glanced up, eyes alight with sudden fire. “Have you been in Jötunheimr?”

Thor gave a look to Volstagg, who only shrugged his great shoulders. Thor looked back to the boy. “During the convergence, there were displacements between the realms. A great frost beast moved from Jötunheimr to Midgard. With the aid of my friend Jane Foster, we returned him to his home.”

The boy’s mouth did not quite move into a frown, but his voice held a wary tone. “She is the mortal.”

“She is Midgardian, yes. A seiðkona of their science, and a very powerful one too.”

Under his regard, she managed little more than a tight smile. Children had never been her thing, though Thor’s ease with the little boy made it somehow worse. “Hello, Rolfe.”

“Hello, Jane Foster.” A slight distrust underlay each word, but a child’s unabashed curiosity seemed to win out as he actually _looked_ at her, like a child on his first trip to the zoo. But within moments he had returned his full attention to Thor, perking up. “Did you fight any Jötnar there? Did you slay them where they stood?”

“No.” The shortness of this sudden answer was not made any more palatable by the flat tone of what he said next. “They are not the mindless beasts of your bedtime stories.”

“What?”

“Thor.” The two glanced upward, and the warning note of Volstagg’s voice promptly melted back into his usual affability. “Dinner is waiting back at the palace, and…” The sharp eyes flickered over them all, and now a proper frown pulled his lips down into the thick mass of his beard. “…delicious as it will no doubt be, and hungry as you all no doubt are, I do believe we best change before we sit down to it. Or, you should do so. I will keep your places in the meantime.”

“And empty our plates, no doubt,” Fandral muttered, but any retort Volstagg might have offered was overridden by Rolfe’s grin, accompanied by the reverential gaze he still kept upon Thor.

“Can I walk with you?” he asked, and Thor gave a great booming laugh that seemed fit to rattle even the solid curves of the Observatory.

“You can _ride_ with me.” With one easy swing of his arms he had the boy up on his shoulders. Shrieking with glee, Rolfe buried his fingers in the thick tail of Thor’s braided hair and tugged on it like a truck’s horn.

“Onward, steed!”

Apparently used to such rough-housing, Thor galloped away at frankly alarming speed, the boy bouncing precariously upon his perch. Yet Volstagg displayed no concern, his hand still dwarfing Gunnhild’s as he began to lead her from the Observatory, Sif falling into a short step at the girl’s other side. Jane might have felt abandoned, if not for the gallant way Fandral offered her an elbow. She took it, wondering what the occasion might be, though he appeared genuine enough. But they were halfway down the bridge before she spoke.

“Fandral?”

“Yes, Dr. Foster?”

“Who is Hela?”

His spine stiffened, though his step did not miss a beat. “Why do you ask?”

“I…it was just a name I heard.”

The song of the rainbow bridge took on a discordant tone beneath them, as if some dark shadow dogged his every footstep. “In the Ironwood?”

“Well, yeah. The witch mentioned her.”

“In what capacity?”

And despite the solidity of the bridge below, Jane felt as though she were falling into the space beyond. “Thor asked Angrboða if she had something. A knife.” Swallowing against the dryness of her throat, she added: “She said she didn’t. That it was Hela’s.”

Fandral said nothing more, the gates of Asgard looming golden and closed before them.

“Who is she?”

“She is queen of the unquiet dead.”

He would say no more. When the doors opened before them he removed his elbow from her hand, and once inside did not put it back.


	3. 1.3: Interference

While Volstagg had spoken of a dinner together, Thor and Jane did not eat in the grand hall. They took their meal instead in a small chamber alone, one fragrant with flowers and creeping vines. The lovely spindly chairs seemed like they ought not to support someone of Thor’s size, but he seemed utterly at home in them. She was partway through the main course before she realised why.

“These were your mother’s rooms,” she said, without thinking. Even as she reached to apologise Thor only smiled, and shook his head. His hands remained very steady where he continued to cut up the latest slab of meat he planned to devour.

“Only in a manner of speaking. The queen’s chambers are closed and sealed, now.” A faint flicker over his eyes was the only betrayal of his calm, his knife moving smooth through the barely-seared flesh. “But this was a place she was very fond of. A neutral space, where we often used to eat together as a family when we wished to be private.”

Her own appetite had never been a large thing. It vanished completely as she looked down at her plate now. “I see.”

There was a delicate clink of cutlery against porcelain, and then warm fingers closed over hers; she glanced up to find him leaning across the table to her, his expression open and soft. “I am sorry, Jane. I cannot expect you to walk soundless around me whenever I speak of those lost to me.” The fingers moved, a gentling motion that oddly reminded her of how he had been with Mánagarm. “There is no need to be so apologetic about something that is not your fault.”

Turning her palm over, she caught his hand between hers, gave him a wry smile. “But it’s not your fault either.”

“I believe we have had this conversation before,” he noted, though with no heat at all. Releasing her hand he turned towards the carafe on his left, hefted the heavy thing with an ease that almost made her jealous. “Would you like some more wine?”

“I…one glass was probably enough.”

“Are you certain?”

As it was Jane knew that she couldn’t contribute the faint swimming of her head just to his close proximity. Still, she gave it a longing look. It _had_ been delicious, sweeter than she had expected, and richer than most wines she had ever had on Midgard. Each sip had brought faint hints of tastes she could not describe. She was fairly certain she did not want to know what its actual alcohol content was.

“All right,” she said. “Hit me.”

He frowned. “I have no desire to hit you.”

“Figure of speech,” she said, and extended her goblet with a flourish. “I’d love another glass.”

First it was only one, but then he tilted the carafe to her again and she hadn’t the heart to tell him no. The third glass was inevitable, given with every sip the aches and mistakes of the day melted away like so much snow beneath the warm Asgardian sun. She only realised the mistake when she went to stand and discovered that she couldn’t. And then she was laughing, and reaching for a table that wasn’t quite where she remembered leaving it. The floor lurched alarmingly upwards but then strong arms came about her waist, drew her back, and then she was being raised up.

“I do believe it is time you took to bed, Lady Jane.”

She gave a little gurgling laugh, low in her throat; it felt almost as if she were flying, given the way he bore her from the room as though she weighed nothing at all. “Oh, that’s _very_ forward of you,” she teased, and then squinted up at him. “Is this how you speak to all your ladies, oh mighty Thor?”

“I do not have other ladies.”

“Are you sure?” The muscle of his upper arm felt taut and warm beneath her fingers, like living breathing stone. “Surely there must be girls beating down your door, just to get a taste of these.”

“Jane, please.”

She let go, and then let her head loll back against his shoulder with a dramatic sigh. “I guess I can’t complain. I went on that date with Richard, after all. Not that we even got to the wine, let alone the fish.” Then her brow furrowed. “God, I wonder if he ever got any of that stupid seabass. Poor Richard.”

Somewhat thankfully Thor chose to let that one go, and did not say another word as he entered her borrowed chambers. “Would you like me to summon a maid to help you undress?”

“What, you’re not going to help?”

He chuckled, the sound as warm as a freshly stoked flame. “You are very drunk,” he murmured, his fingers gentle where they pressed her hair back from her face. “And very tired, after the day I have put you through. It would be taking advantage.”

Her own hand stole up, drifted light over the callused skin of palm and finger. “Nah. This is what I want.”

Very carefully he caught her hand, giving it back to her in such a way for a moment she felt as if it wasn’t even attached to her wrist anymore. She was staring at it with a bemused expression when he chuckled again. “It is not so simple.” Guiding her to the bed, he watched her flop down with nothing at all like grace; she almost thought he could’ve been laughing at her, somewhere behind that noble smile.

“Will you be fine if I leave you now?”

Her hand snaked upward, took hold of his wrist, drew him near. “Don’t leave me.”

This close bent over her, his hair brushed against her collarbones, his scent something clean and masculine. “Jane.”

With nails like anchors, she shook her head, regretted the motion almost immediately. But even as her vision swam, she looked no-where else but into the deep plasma-blue of his eyes. “And don’t make me leave _you_ ,” she whispered, voice and throat both suddenly very thick. “You shouldn’t be alone. Not now. Not ever again.”

He recoiled – and for a moment it seemed as if she’d struck him, low and hard in the gut. “ _Jane_.”

“Thor.” She reached for him again, a drowning sailor finding no anchor. “Stay.”

Though he came closer, it was but to gently push her back down into the bed. “Good night, Lady Jane.” His lips against her forehead could have been a blessing, or a curse. “I will see you in the morning.”

The door clicked close behind him, as gentle as butterfly wings; still it made her wince. A minute or so later Jane considered getting up, for at least as long as it took to wash her face and take off the borrowed gown. But the world was spinning, a golden kaleidoscope of which she was the broken centre. Jane closed her eyes and let it spiral her into sleep.

 

*****

 

Whatever else could be said for Asgardian wine, it at least did not bring with it the terrible hangover she expected. It did not, however, grant her any blessed memory loss either. Jane was standing at the sink with her hands submerged in a delicate porcelain basin when she realised what she had said to him the night before.

“Oh my _god_.” Her hands, chill as they had been in the cold water, could do nothing to take away the heat of her face. “Could you be any more desperate?”

In her jeans and shirt, firmly Midgardian now, Jane emptied her satchel upon the rug and frowned. She was so deep into the data already on her tablet when a knock came on the door that at first she did not even hear it.

“Come in!”

Thor entered, though it was no surprise; she wasn’t exactly in a position to be receiving guests. This morning he had dressed in his more casual attire, though something about his face screamed thunder. Her stomach fell through the floor even as she climbed to her feet, met his even stare.

“You’re angry at me.” Taking a shuddering breath, she wondered how in the hell things could have gone this sour between them so very quickly. “Look, about last night – I’m not usually like that, I just—”

“You told Fandral of my conversation with Angrboða.”

“I…oh. _That_.” He did not answer, though she felt no threat from him – at least not one physical. Instead something else roiled in his eyes, much closer to disappointment, or perhaps betrayal. That was actually far worse. “I didn’t…well, I didn’t tell him all of it. I just…I wanted to know who Hela was.”

Turning his face away, he raised a hand, pressed fingertips against his brow as if it ached. “Which was more than enough to raise their concerns.”

For a moment she said nothing at all. Then she pushed to her feet, lips pursing. “Well, fair enough,” she said coolly, and when he looked over something in her snapped. “The queen of the _dead_ , Thor? You want a knife belonging to the queen of the dead! Why would you want that?”

He’d come into the room like a thunderstorm, and yet his temper did not break. Instead he glanced away, closed his eyes. “It was a mistake to stay here. To come here, perhaps.” She scarcely heard his next words. “I must go back to Midgard.”

“And what, just run away from your problems? From _me_?” When he did not respond her voice rose into a shout. “Because if you didn’t notice, Thor, I live on Midgard. And you’re not leaving me here – because the only person who treats me like something more than a dog you dragged in from the street is Heimdall! And sure, I like Heimdall, and sure, when I was a kid I always used to dream about living in the Hubble telescope, but that’s really not in the plan right now. Okay? I have work to do. At home.”

In the stunned silence that followed, she breathed hard and quick, fists clenched at her side, every inch of her aching as if she’d run a marathon. Thor did not move, only waited. Time felt to slow as she opened her hands, palms turned to the ceiling as if she discharged herself of the electricity that crackled beneath her skin. From the way he watched her, Jane thought that Thor knew the feeling far better than she ever would. And she sighed, and stepped forward.

“Thor. You need to talk to someone.” Even as she took his hands, she took another breath, prayed to gods she did not believe in that she would have the strength to make him understand. “And maybe that’s not going to be me. But that’s _okay_. Because…I’m not from round here. I don’t know how this all works. Sure, I lost my Dad, and my Mom’s so absent she might as well exist only on paper, but I don’t…I don’t know how to help you.” Now her voice trembled, roughened by the thickened salt of unshed tears. “But I wish I did. I really, really wish I did.”

“Jane.”

She shook her head, hair flying about her so hard it struck her cheeks with whip-lash sting. “You can come to Midgard. Of course you can come to Midgard. I _want_ you to come to Midgard.” When she tightened her fingers around his, she felt as though she held a creature made of stone. Still she pressed harder, felt the warmth of the great heart beating within, and she smiled even as she thought she might just cry after all. “But you have to let me in.”

His hands spasmed under hers, and then he drew back. She watched him go, but he gave her a slight shake of his head. “Please, Jane.” He paused, and then his whole body seemed to sag beneath the burden of a weight she could scarcely imagine, let alone see. “Could we not do this here?”

“All right. Fine.” She bent forward, began to pick up her scattered things. The action of it at least hid the tremor of her hands. “We’ll do it in London, then.”

 

*****

 

It turned out to be not quite as simple as that. Thor had one final errand to attend to while Jane found herself in yet another sitting room, this time looking out over the glitter of a gilded city. With her tablet and what data she had loaded onto it already she could claim no reason to be bored. She even had plenty of battery power remaining. Yet she could not settle to anything, her mind as adrift as the faint galaxies painted in a dreamscape of watercolours across the arching sky.

“Jane Foster.” The voice held all the command of a career soldier, formal and clipped. “I would speak with you.”

Jane had not even heard the door open. “Lady Sif,” she said, stomach dropping even as she forced the corners of her lips upward. “I…sure. Have a seat.”

The woman looked for a moment as if she was about to say she preferred to stand. Then, without a word, she pulled out the opposite chair and fitted herself into it with a casual careless grace. Sif did not wear her armour today, but the flexible fit of her trousers and the ease of her movements made Jane believe that such clothing would hardly hinder her from engaging in an all-out brawl, should the need arise. Not to mention Jane did not doubt she had several knives concealed on her person.

“So. What can I do for you?”

The tight smile Sif wore spoke volumes as to what she thought of that particular idea. “It is more what you can do for me,” she said carefully, and did not give Jane a chance to reply. “I do not think it is healthy for Thor to be leaving Asgard in the state he is in.”

“It is his choice.” And then, because she could not help it, “I guess there’s a lot of bad memories here, you know?”

Her mouth tightened. “This I would not deny. But running from a problem rarely does anything to solve it.”

“I told him that. But I don’t think it’s the kind of problem that you’re saying it is, maybe.” With a sigh Jane ran her fingers over the sleeping screen of her tablet, coaxing it back to life. Tense as she still was from their own earlier argument, she had no wish to argue with his friends. “Look, I think he’s just tired. He needs a break from all this, and…Midgard might just be easier for him.”

The expression upon her face turned troubled, but Jane sensed the woman did not disagree with her. “I have never seen him like this,” she murmured, but any illusion that she might have been talking to herself was dispelled the moment she fixed those blade-shape eyes upon Jane. “Not even after…after he thought Loki dead the first time. He had his moments of quiet, but I still felt that he would come to terms with what had happened, though he might never understand.”

For not the first time, Jane had a feeling akin to that of swimmer suddenly realising just how far they’d strayed from the shore. “But you don’t think that now?”

“I was not there when Loki fell from the Bifröst.” Her eyes now took on a hard, distant light. “But from what I have been told, it was a word from Odin that caused him to let go.”

Her skin felt to be a layer of ice, cracking over the tremor of muscle below. If there was one thing she hoped never to hear again, it was the flat and dispassionate way Thor had spoken the story of his brother’s surrender to the void. “That’s what Thor told me, too.”

For the most fleeting of seconds Jane saw clear disbelief writ across Sif’s face, chased quickly by something far closer to betrayal. Then both were gone, her expression merely sororal. “But this second time…Thor put Loki in the position where he might die.”

“It was Loki’s choice,” Jane protested, and Sif’s even gaze did not drop away.

“We both know that. Loki himself would have known, and do not doubt he had myriad reasons for choosing to do as he did.” This time her frustration did show, both in the way she leaned back from the table and in the sudden distance in her eyes. “But in Thor’s mind, he allowed his younger brother to die when he might have saved him. This time the opportunity and the situation were both clearly in his hands – and he let him go.”

The prickling sensation across her skin felt as though she’d caught hold of an electric wire, and it in turn might never let her go. “But he died with honour. I thought that was important to you guys.”

Sif blinked. “It is everything,” she said, heavy and strange with an age Jane would never reach herself, let alone understand. “But then, when they were children, Loki and Thor were everything to each other.”

The tablet beeped beneath her tightening fingers, but Jane found she could not look away from the warrior seated across from her. “So what are you telling me?”

“There is a storm approaching.” This time she inclined forward, one hand upon her hip; Jane saw no blade there, but her blood ran cool. Sif leaned closer still. “Can you not feel it?”

And she closed her eyes, felt the ache of unshed tears, the burn of a thousand stars fallen too low. “All the time.”

“It must break.” The sound of her voice in the darkness rang like a clarion bell. “And if you cannot weather it, Jane Foster, then send him back to us. Back to his home.” Jane opened her eyes, found Sif still before her like an unalienable truth. “This is all I ask of you.”

In the silence that followed Jane could only stare at her. Her dark hair was so unusual amongst the Asgardians; the only other person she had seen with the same had been Loki, and he was not even Asgardian at all. Yet her blue-green eyes remained as watchful and steady as any of the soldiers she had seen: a warrior born even when she had no battlefield to stand upon.

But then, perhaps for her, all was war.

“I swear,” she said, voice like that of a stranger. Sif stared at her for a moment, as if stripping away all artifice in search of the truth beneath. She must have found what she sought for, given that she stood but a moment later and nodded.

“Thank you.” She paused, and then with a wry grace, added, “I wish you well in your chosen quest, Jane Foster.”

“Thank you, Lady Sif.”

There could be little more to say, but it didn’t seem to matter to Sif; she left without so much as a glance backward. Jane looked back to her tablet. The tremble of her hand blurred the text, but it didn’t matter. Her thoughts had not felt so calm in days.

 

*****

 

It had been some hours before Thor had returned, and then they walked again to the Observatory with the song of the rainbow bridge beneath their feet. She had only just avoided making a comment about blue shells; the Asgardians already thought mortals odd enough, in her experience. At least the nod from Heimdall had been kind before he had pushed them through the very fabric of the universe. Jane knew she was never getting used to this: the sensation of being unmade and remade, her every atom vibrating as if she were constructed entirely of plasma and sound and heat.

The darkening skies of London heralded their return, the air holding the faint chill of a spring still unsure about its coming. Despite the dusk it remained reasonably early, but Thor seemed exhausted. Jane didn’t know for sure that he’d even slept the night before; it felt only sensible to send him to bed.

Somewhat to her surprise, god of thunder or no, he went without protest. Standing outside the closed door, she laid a palm upon the thin wood, and sighed. It was only a little flat, but with four bedrooms it was just enough room for all of them. And Darcy had loudly said she didn’t mind if space constraints meant she had to sleep on top of Ian. Jane was just personally never getting over the fact she had an alien space prince in the spare room.

Seated on the floor before the couch, shenleft the BBC news channel on with the volume turned low, and then set about making some order of the downloaded data. When Darcy came and plonked herself down beside her, Jane blinked owlishly at the clock, and then drew a sharp breath. She hadn’t quite meant to stay up so late. Surely passage across time and space ought to have some quantum equivalent of jetlag, but it looked like science had won this round.

As if reading her mind, Darcy offered her a steaming mug. “Hey babe. How’s science?”

“Science…is good. Better than good.” She took a sip from the mug, barely repressed an orgasmic sigh; Darcy made the best hot chocolate she’d ever tasted. “Hell, it’ll be fantastic once I get all this data downloaded. It’s just taking so damn long.”

“Good things come to those who wait. Like porn. Except this isn’t the good kind of porn. It’s physics porn.” Barely repressing a shudder, she added, “I’d rather watch Erik running around without his pants on.”

Jane’s fingers froze. “Really?”

“No. Geez.” Balancing her cup with the ease of a caffeine addict, Darcy leaned closer to see the dragging slowness of a progress bar. “D’you want me to take a look at anything? See if I can get it to run faster?”

Waving her back, Jane reached for another component. “No, it’s fine. But thanks.”

Shrugging cardigan-clad shoulders, Darcy canted back against the couch, gave her a considering look. “So, how was space?”

“Spacey.”

“Wow. Ph.D. in astrophysics, and that’s all you got. So much for Columbia.”

Jane gave her a _look_. “Not that I’m not grateful for the hot chocolate, but did you want something?”

“Did you get me a present?” she retorted. “Because honestly, you go halfway across space and time like _three times_ and I still haven’t gotten even a lousy t-shirt. Although I guess they don’t have t-shirts. You could have gotten me a gilded breastplate or something.”

Poking her tablet, Jane screwed up her nose at the error message it shot back at her. “Remind me next time,” she said idly, and then winced at Darcy’s shriek.

“Really?” Both hands rose, cupped her chest and forced already ample cleavage up into a conformation that was downright impractical. Darcy tilted her head with critical concern, and then pushed the entire lot in Jane’s direction. “Should I take some measurements? Do you think they’d have my size?”

She leaned back far enough so that she nearly toppled over, very carefully keeping her eyes on her screen. “Darcy, I _really_ don’t need to see that.”

“Jealousy does not become you,” she sniffed, though she let her chest fall back into something more natural. Sipping her own hot chocolate, she leaned over Jane’s shoulder to peer at what she had going. “So, you got a shit tonne of data, yeah? Whatcha gonna build with it?”

And that was really the million dollar question. “I’m not entirely sure. I guess I’m hoping for something…well, not like the Bifröst. I don’t think trying to anchor something of that power or capability anywhere on Earth is going to end well. Too many cooks for one giant explosive pot, really.”

“Plus SHIELD would totally fuck it up.” Darcy only rolled her eyes at the _look_ this earned her. “Hey, they don’t return my calls. I can talk shit about them if I want to! And they don’t return _your_ calls, either.”

In truth she had made very little effort to speak with them, and not just because after the death of Phil Coulson there was no-one there she truly felt comfortable speaking with. It felt easier just to assume they knew Thor was with her now. More than once, out on the street, she’d had the faint creeping sensation that they were being watched. She just didn’t know if that was because they were waiting to see what Thor would do, or because the UK was outside of their jurisdiction. But despite leaving almost immediately after the battle to repair matters with his father, Thor had spoken with Commander Fury. She’d just never bothered asking him what had come of it.

_You can’t just pretend like you’ve got him all to yourself, anymore._

“I’m thinking something more like playing with portals,” she said, thinking aloud; Darcy immediately sat up straight, slamming her cup down on the carpet.

“Awesome! There’d better be cake.”

“Only if you make it.”

“Done.” And when Jane gave her yet another odd look, she just grinned. “Hey, it’s midnight. I’ve got nothing better to do. Except screw around on tumblr while I instagram LEGOs in obscene poses. Banana okay with you?”

Though she shook her head, the smile on her face had grown wide enough to hurt. “Darcy, you’re a goddess.”

“You bet your skinny little ass I am.”

A moment later she sashayed out, leaving Jane to return to her work. It scarcely seemed any time at all before the flat filled with the scent of baking, underlain with Darcy’s karaoke rendition of Lady Gaga’s entire back catalogue.

 

*****

 

She’d got maybe a couple hours of sleep in the end, not that it mattered; Jane still felt as wired as she might have after drinking ten cups of black espresso. As she stumbled into the kitchen, however, she recalled the last thing she’d eaten the night before. After having devoured then half a still-warm cake, the frosting melting into its collapsed centre, her stomach now protested the thought of anything remotely sweet. She had settled herself with the packet of Shreddies at the kitchen table when she heard light steps, looked up to see Thor staring at the cupboards with a lost expression.

“Thor? Is something wrong?”

Glancing over, he shook his head as if awakening from a waking dream. “Oh, no. I was just…thinking of Pop-Tarts.”

Her stomach groaned. “Oh. Yeah. Well, they’re not really a thing around here. England, I mean.” Not that Jane was sure what he properly understood of Earth’s socio-political barriers. Or basic geography. “I mean, if you want some, Sainsbury’s sometimes has stuff from other countries. Or I’m sure Darcy’s picked up some from somewhere before. I could ask.”

He blinked at her, then gave a short chuckle as he sat down at the table. “No, no, there is no need to go to any trouble on my account.”

Spearing one Shreddie on her spoon, she began to grind it into the bottom of the plate with absent-minded viciousness. “Well, I never liked them all that much myself. Erik was the one who did, to be honest. But if you want some, I’ll make Darcy go find them. Though she’ll probably just force Ian to do it. Poor guy.”

“No, it…it truly is not necessary. They were pleasant. I simply…” He stared at the glass in his hand, as if the orange juice within could be read like tea leaves. “…they were pleasant.”

No guy she had ever dated in the past had been much one to talk of their feelings; Don had been only the latest in a particularly dismal line. Even as she wondered if what they were doing could truly be called _dating_ , she had to think that she had no idea where to start with a person like Thor. “Just…let me know if you change your mind, okay?”

Setting the glass down, he reached for the cereal box; from the way he squinted at the text, she assumed that the Alltongue really did not apply to the written word. “So we are far distant from your land of New Mexico?”

“Pretty much. New York’s closer. Just across the pond, as they say.”

His eyes were very blue when he glanced up. She did not know how anyone could deny him anything, not when he fixed his entire attention upon them like this. “You never did explain why you were here.”

That made her wince. Leaving her spoon in her plate, she snapped a hairband from around her wrist, began to pull her hair back into a sloppy ponytail. “Sometimes I think it was destiny. What with the whole Greenwich thing, anyway,” she said with a raised eyebrow; Thor showed no surprise at all at the idea of their fates being made to cross in this way. “My Mom’s American, but my Dad’s from the UK. I think I told you that? It’s just that my Mom…well, I was born here, but she just really wanted to go back to the States. Didn’t like the lifestyle. She also hated me calling her Mum, actually, but I did it anyway. Then…we moved to America when I was in the third grade, and I just wanted to fit in with the other kids. Ended up calling her Mom after all.”

Though his serious expression told her he’d been listening, she didn’t think he’d quite followed. “This is…a linguistic distinction?”

“Regional, more like it. It’s a long story.” With her hair up, she directed the nervous energy of her fingers to fiddling with the sugar bowl. “But…I don’t know. I kind of lost heart in my research, I guess.”

“And now it beats again.”

That made her smile; it figured that a magic space prince would have poetry in his soul. “Yeah. I guess so.” Pushing the silver bowl away with the heel of her hand, she balanced her elbows upon the table and smiled. “I’m definitely getting some interesting stuff out of this. Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure.”

She could not be entirely sure that was true, considering his drawn features, but he had apparently decided on Shreddies after all. She watched as he flowed across the room to the dinnerware cupboard, all smooth muscle and form even in the mundane jeans and t-shirt. Not that the way he filled out the tight black material could ever be called mundane.

“Are you going to spend the day working?”

Startled, Jane blinked her attention back to Thor’s face. “A little, maybe.” He took his place opposite her, and she bit her lip as the cereal began to fall into the bowl. “But you and me, we’re owed a talk.”

The milk she’d left upon the table; he reached for it, his expression very even. “Yes. I suppose we are.”

Somewhere in her mind she let out the imaginary breath she’d been holding. Though they had scarcely known each other for more than what amounted to a week or two, the last few days of arguing had worn her out. “Let’s not hang around here, though. I mean, Darcy will _say_ she’ll leave us alone, but she totally won’t. She’s more likely to try and record it or something. We’ll go for a walk.”

He glanced up, again with that lopsided smile that made her heart pinch and ache in ways she had never known possible. “I should like that very much.”

Tapping her fingertips upon the table, she glanced over to the counter where her copy of the _London A-Z_ sat like a dusty ancient treasure. “We haven’t seen as much of London as we should. Even me, and I’ve been here for like a year. Time to get out of the house.” Reaching for her own plate, she nodded at his in a way she hoped wasn’t too maternal. “Finish your breakfast, and we’ll get going.”

“Thank you, Jane.”

“Hey. We’re friends. What else are we for?”

This time the smile he gave her held a distinctly devilish tint. “What else, indeed?”

The faint heating of her cheeks had her fumbling her spoon, turning her flustered features downward. “Yeah, well,” she muttered, and tried to turn her attention back to her cereal. Her stomach refused to unknot, and a moment later she stood, plastering a casual look on her face. “I’m not all that hungry, actually. You finish up, and I’ll go grab a shower, okay?”

The smirk he gave her said that he knew too much. “Certainly.”

For some reason she could not quite put her finger on, she was still smiling when she ducked under the spray.

 

*****

 

After observing several mortals doing the same, Thor soon began walking with his hands in his pockets. The stance slouched his shoulders forward, so that even with the long tail of his pulled-back hair and the sheer bulk of him, he could almost pass for normal. All it took to shatter the illusion was for him to raise his head. One look from those lightning-blue eyes and he could never be anything like ordinary.

Jane supposed he really would have to talk to SHIELD or someone eventually about his ongoing presence on Earth. She still doubted they had any interest in her, after their briefest of contacts following the scene at Greenwich; they’d seemingly lost interest after she said she had no idea if Thor would be back. But then, she’d fallen off the radar of active research a year beforehand. No wonder they thought she was a deadend, scarcely worth their time even after what she’d done for them at Tromsø.

_Not this time. Not ever again._

St. James Park had been her first choice; she’d always found some calm in the distant sound of Big Ben in his tower at Westminster, the constant conversation of ducks and the scrabble of squirrels seeking food from passersby. Yet even with his civilian clothing Thor could still catch a lot of stares. After the fourth time she deflected a curious jogger, Jane decided it was no place for a private conversation.

“I have an idea.”

After some more debate about Oyster cards – Thor still did not quite seem to grasp the concept, and she dreaded to think how he’d dealt with the turnstiles at North Greenwich on his own, maddened elf-warriors or no – they took the Tube to Archway. The short walk up the hill just beyond the station had her briefly mourning the loss of her poor car, but by the time they were cutting through Waterlow Park she found she much preferred this to sitting in endless London traffic.

Thor, too, seemed far more content in the cool park air than he had in the congested streets. “You wish to speak here?” he asked, face turned up to the clouded English sun, and Jane shook her head.

“No, it’s a place just a bit further up.” Digging her own gloved hands deeper into her pockets, she gave a hasty little laugh. “We’re going to have to do something a bit…um, naughty, actually.”

He gave her a sideways glance both amused and intrigued. “ _Naughty_.”

On the other side of the park, she led him a ways down the small lane, and past a great gated stone facade he eyed with some curiosity but did not ask after. Only when they had turned a corner did she take a breath, examine the fence, and then give him a raised eyebrow.

“I know you haven’t got Mjölnir, but can you boost me up over the fence? And then climb it yourself?”

Had he been anyone but himself, Jane suspected he might have rolled his eyes. “Of course, but this is…private property?”

“Technically, I guess so, but…” Giving the forested enclosure a wary look, Jane began to wonder if perhaps she’d made a miscalculation. “…it’s a cemetery, actually. And I know it’s not really a thing you guys have on Asgard, but it seemed…appropriate. It’s really peaceful. And pretty.” _And filled with the dead who are not ours._ “And you’re kind of not supposed to come in here except on a tour, so it’ll be quiet. Just us.”

At first he gave her only a measured look. Then the grave expression broke into a grin she could only describe as _boyish_ , and for a moment she had a clear idea of what a horror he must have been in his childhood. Then his hands were about her waist and she was up and over. A moment later he jumped down beside her, light as a cat, his hand extended.

“Yes?”

“Yes,” she said, and curled her fingers about his, found them warm and callused. “Let’s walk.”

The rustle of the trees gave them the softest accompaniment as their shoes scuffled along the leaf-strewn paths. Jane caught the faint glimpse of a fox scampering into the undergrowth, while squirrels without number shinned up the trees to escape their intrusion. Places like this never ceased to amaze her, found as they could be in the middle of a bustling city like London. It seemed to exist within a bubble of its own reality, populated not with people but instead grand old monuments overgrown with ivy and moss, names obscured and forgotten by time and the living alike. Angels and animals slept side by side, draped urns and crosses high above their heads, speckled with the sun which managed to creep through the ever-thickening canopy of the whispering trees.

“It is very peaceful.”

True though it was, Jane couldn’t repress a snort. “Try coming here with Darcy,” she said, and shook her head. “We actually got kicked out the first time. So we went over to the other side and she tried to make out with Karl Marx.”

“From your expression, this was not well done.”

“It sure wasn’t,” she said, but no more. Communism and Marxism did not really seem the kind of socialist concepts the prince of an obligate space monarchy would readily understand. Instead she raised one hand, swept her arm about the meandering paths of the forested hillside. “Do you guys have anything like this, on Asgard? I mean, I know that you…that you have the longboat thing, but do you have memorials? That you can go to?”

“We speak to the stars.” His face had risen to the sky, and Jane’s throat felt very thick when she remembered the orbs risen from opened palms, a new constellation that had glistened like the unshed tears in his eyes. “But Mother will have her gardens, always. Even without her presence, her seiðr was woven into them in such a way that they will always remain, just as she wished.”

Though the name had an almost sacrilegious taste upon her tongue, she knew it was the reason why they had come here now. “And Loki?”

He sighed, shook his head. “Much of what he had was sealed away, when he fell from the Bifröst.” She could read nothing in his tone now. “What remained was removed when he was incarcerated.”

Despite having witnessed a royal Asgardian funeral, accompanied as it was by the rites of a hundred and more warriors, Jane still didn’t quite understand them; for all she knew, they had burned his belongings. It left a sour taste in her mouth, more so than even Loki’s name. “Do you have _nothing_ of his?”

“I have his daggers.” For some reason that made him chuckle, humourless as it the sound was. “I kept them, after he fell. Not even when he returned could I give them up. Or back.”

“At least that’s something,” she said, after a long pause. He only shook his head, again.

“Perhaps.”

Not once had he broken the rhythm of their gentle pace, and it had brought them to the great curving Circle of Lebanon. Curiosity radiated from him like sunshine though it gave her a faint shiver to back here. From the first time she’d been it had felt like being in a crucible of stone, hemmed in by the dead, forced to walk in endless circle. Somehow it could not surprise her that Thor stopped here, staring upwards at the raised central dais. The spreading branches of a cedar tree enveloped them from above, shadows twisting and turning in the faint movement of the winds.

“I do not dream of him.”

He sounded like a stranger. Her own voice cracked on its uncertain note. “Surely that’s a good thing.”

This time it was his sigh that seemed to shake the branches. “I have not spoken to you overmuch of what happened in Asgard, when I returned.”

“Yeah, well, I figured that was your business, really. And you have your friends there, so.”

The excuse held only weakly to her ears, but Thor’s eyes traced the divided path of the great tree’s thick trunk, skipping from one divergence to the next. “They were of comfort to me, yes. But only so far.” His hands tightened to loose fists, fell open again. “A phalanx of Einherjar had been dispatched to Svartálfaheimr to retrieve Loki’s body.”

A shiver moved through her skin, burrowing deep, a crawling kind of chaos lying in wait. Yet she said nothing, waited for him to go on.

“They brought him back to Glaðsheimr, and his body was prepared for the funerary rites as befitted a Prince of Asgard.”

Knowing what little she did, she could not help her question, small-voiced as it was. “Did they know he…that he was from Jötunheimr?”

He winced, the pain sharp as any fresh blow. “This was not common knowledge, no. Those who know this are my father, myself, the Warriors Three, and Sif.” There was a brief pause, and when he went on she caught a quickening pulse of despair. “Though of course, Mother knew too.”

Her eyes fixed upon one of the many tombs, their doors shuttered and dark. “Will they ever know?”

“I assume not.” Thor still looked up, the tree’s leaves trembling like unshed tears. “Father believed it was Loki’s choice, and it can no longer be made.”

The skies overhead had deepened with grey cloud; she could make out the faintest unhappy rumble of thunder in the distance, like a child’s toys run over a wooden attic floor. London had never had a penchant for sunny skies, but rain had not been in the forecast she had read that morning.

“So you had the funeral?”

“Yes. A small affair, mostly only for family.” The bitter laugh rose upon a chill breeze. “What little of it remained, of course.”

She had been the one to facilitate the conversation, but for not the first time Jane thought she had made a tactical error in thinking herself capable of handling it at all. Yet she remembered Sif’s grave expression, and tried again. She owed him more than that.

“It…went well?”

Dry leaves skittered about his still feet, the vague beginnings of a dust devil; Jane felt a fat drop of rain fall upon one cheek, cold and silent. “We had no body, the last time. I would have expected it to be…different, when we did. Watching him leave Asgard with a warrior’s rites, ascending to the heavens as always should have been his destiny, whether he chose to fight with blade or seiðr.”

The tree overhead shook with a sudden gust of wind, the rattling of cedar branches like the wringing hands of crones bent over the melting pot of fate itself. “He was very good at what he did,” she said, uncertain. He glanced over, eyes lit silver from within.

“I do not dream of him.” Again when he smiled, she could sense no joy or pleasure from what had forced his lips upward. “I dreamed of him often, after he fell.”

She shivered again, feeling suddenly as though she’d been cast out in the middle of a snowstorm with no jacket, no sense of where she had come from or where she might go for shelter. “Perhaps some part of you knew that he was not lost to you,” she ventured, soft. Thor’s vehement reply felt like a cold blast stolen from an Antarctic winter.

“But he _was_! I came to Midgard, and the creature that I found there was not the brother I once knew.”  His shoulders hunched forward, fists bunching before his hips; the cedar tree lurched with the growing squall. “I dragged home nothing but a shade, an empty husk. Loki had fallen, and lost much of himself along the way.” When he glanced up, his bitter laughter rolled like thunder. “In that sense, one might have thought him whole again, when he rose from his longboat and went to join Mother.”

Her uncertainty had the bitter taste of cowardice, now. “…but you do not think he did?”

“No.” A tremor jolted through him, a faultline too close to catastrophic rupture. “I feel like Loki never died at all.”

“But you—”

“I held him in my arms as he died!” Light filled the air, blinding and terribly, shockingly _silver_. A roar of thunder shook the ground as if it rose from within rather than descended from the sky; Jane lurched sideways, struck an elbow hard against a stone column. Thor stood unmoving at the centre while the air about him hummed like a hive of angered soldiers, eyes electric and furious. “He _died_ and it was in aid of _me_ and yet it is as if I expect him to emerge at any moment, to tell me it was all some great jest – that _all_ of this was some great jest, that I shall be king as I almost was and he will be always by my side and we will adventure together and ride side by side to war and glory and then sit together at the high table while he regales all with tales of our adventures, and…and…” Lightning struck again and it was as if it cut the strings of a marionette; he slumped forward, hair hanging in his eyes; she never worked out how she could hear his whisper over the terrible rending thunder that came with it. “I cannot mourn what I have not lost, Jane.”

“Thor.” Tears pricked her eyes, though she could never be sure who they were for. “Thor, he is _gone_.”

Rain pelted them both now, every drop needle-sharp and freezing. He displayed no awareness of it, but even as it felt like glass shards were being driven beneath her skin she did not turn. She did not flee. Jane stepped forward and wrapped two hands about one fist, swallowed hard. He would not hear her above the thunder, but she could feel his heartbeat. Somehow, it seemed enough.

“I do not dream of him,” he said, as dull as dirty snow. “We fought, yes. So many times. But we forgave each other, in the end. If he could speak to me, he would. I am certain of it.”

A terrible urge struck her: to laugh. She’d been a scientist ever since she could speak, or so it felt to her, and nothing had ever seemed more impossible. But instead she squeezed his fingers tight, and could not tell bitter tears from the frigid rain upon her cheeks. “The dead can’t speak to the living.”

His head moved back and forth, water leaping from the loosed hair. “In dreams, they come to us.” Drawing a hitching breath, he actually did laugh. “I dream of walking in noonday gardens, the scent of her perfume tickling my nose and making me giggle. I’m just a child, but there is always a warm hand guiding my faltering steps. She taught me to stand, after all – to move always forward, never look back.”

Her heart ached. “Thor—”

“Loki would speak with me, if he could. He always spoke to me, no matter how often I might tell him to hold his silence.” His laughter had turned to tears, though it was rain that traced cold lines over cheekbone, dripping from his jaw. “It is _me_. I am the fool who never knew how or when to listen.”

“ _Thor_.”

For all she held him, he could have been a million lightyears distant. “I need to speak to him. And if he cannot come to me, I must go to him.”

“And this is why you want the knife.” She could have laughed. But then she was already weeping. “Thor, don’t. You _can’t_.” The words were like a broken dam in her own mind, loosing the sudden memory of a day years before, a flash of images like faded photographs in an album long since pushed into cold storage: sitting on a college campus, so deep in her thesis she often forgot to eat, let alone check her messages. A series of phone calls, her roommate still and shocked. The flight across the Atlantic, staring out across an ocean made of darkness. The snow everywhere when she arrived. Erik waiting for her for at the gate, his face drawn in shadow and gaunt white lines. A mess of Norwegian at the hospital, the police station, the funeral home. And then, lastly, an urn held on her lap as she flew back to the States alone.

_What would you have said, had you lived long enough for me to arrive?_

“You can’t do this,” she said, nails digging into skin she lacked the strength to break. “It won’t help. Believe me, it won’t.”

“It will!” She almost cried out: both from the terrible strength of his hands were they crushed tight about both of hers, and from the terrible force of his full attention turned upon her. It drove into her soul, embedding itself deeper than she thought even she might go. “Jane, you do not understand. I cannot mourn him. I cannot even cry for him. I do not feel he is gone. I need…I need to say goodbye.”

Like a leaf in a gale she shook, anchored to her branch by only the thinnest of strained stem. “You already did.”

“No.” She groaned, the fragile bones of her hands grinding in his grip. “ _No_.”

The wind wound about her with the force of a rising hurricane, frigid rain barely felt upon skin already turned numb and thick beneath her jacket, her jeans. A moment later he let her hands go, and for all the relief of the returned circulation Jane felt true terror when she looked at him. With face turned to the opened heavens he stood still, and he stood alone. He had no hammer of the gods at his side, not now, but he did not need it – nothing about him seemed human. He was as much the storm as the scream of the winds, the shout of the thunder, the misery of the rain.

Jane did not think. The pain in her bruised hands did not matter. She stepped forward, put her hands on his arms, then on his face. He did not react, but nor did he resist the movement when she tilted his face gently downwards. His silvered-blue eyes stared right through her, her heart skipping an uncertain beat. Then it didn’t matter. She rose from her toes, all but jumping upward, and pressed her lips to his.

Not even a second passed before his arms came about her, pulled her upwards, as if she’d been caught in the upward twist of a tornado. The fierceness of his kiss devoured her from the outside in, stripping skin and muscle from the bone beneath before turning it all to dust, scattering it to skies she had never seen in life, would now know only in the absoluteness of death.

_Come back._

The calming felt like awakening from a nightmare; she didn’t even realise she had closed her eyes. Yet when she opened them it was to find her cheek pressed hard against his chest, arms tight about his waist and the sun clawing at her vision. Squinting, she glanced about in wonder; the cemetery bore the golden shine of Asgard herself. It hurt her eyes. _He_ hurt her eyes. Thor could have been the sun, but now she looked at him she could not bear to look anywhere else.

“Please, Thor.” She raised a shaking hand, pressed two fingers to his jaw. “For your sake, as well as his. _Let it go_.”

The peace of him had the terrible calm of the angels bent over their bones, buried deep and unseen by any eyes but their own. A fear twisted low in her gut even before he reached for her. The scent of freshly turned earth soured in her nostrils, feet squelching in the mud, and still he only smiled.

“I knew there was a reason why the Norns drew us together, Jane Foster.”

“What?” she asked, though with his hands about her upper arms like he thought her an anchor of a drowning man

“I must speak with him one more time.” He lowered his head, pressed his forehead to hers. His eyes were like eternity stretched before her: inviting, endless, impossible. “And you are the only person who might do this for me.”


	4. 1.4: Harmonics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was mainly just going to let this story stand on its own and not say much of anything, but I really did just want to pop my head in and say _thank you so much_ for reading. It means a lot to me, considering this story's well outside my usual comfort writing zone. So: thank you. Always.  <3

Silence moved between them like a third person during their walk back across the park. They didn’t bother with the Tube this time, Jane navigating the bus schedule while Thor watched the clearing clouds above them. It took fifteen minutes for them to catch one, loaded as they were with drenched passengers muttering direly about the unexpected storm. Yet they managed to find a seat together at the top, the city moving slow past them below. At the front of the bus there was nothing before them but the road.

The flat was silent when they got home, with no sign of either Ian or Darcy. It was also surprisingly tidy. Jane skirted the kitchen table, made for the counter with a purpose too strongly motivated to be at all innocent. “Do you want some coffee or something?”

He stood in the living room, an unmoving statue that stared right through her. “You have not said no.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t said yes, either.” Keeping her back to him, she reached for the kettle and flicked the tap on with her other hand. “Let me sort this out first, okay?”

By the time she had two cups in hand he had disappeared, but the opened window said something for his final destination. Given the heater had been left on she could have said something about being raised in a tent, but she thought the better of it. Life was different for those who grew up in golden palaces. Instead she stuck her head out, extended the two mugs. “A little help?”

Thor took both and she followed them, climbing out onto the roof before pulling the window closed behind her. After clambering up beside him, feet braced against one of the chimneys, she accepted the cup and its gratifying heat. The taste was even better, strong and black, clarifying in its bitterness. Her jeans clung like a second skin, still wet from the cemetery and heavy on her thighs. She had to wonder why they couldn’t just sit on the balcony, but then the memory of Smith Motors had a potency that many others did not. With a sigh, she looked to him, and waited.

He shifted under her scrutiny. The cup seemed ridiculously small in his hands, even as he stared into its black depths as if it might offer up the secrets of the universe. “I would speak with Hela,” he said, final and deliberate – and utterly without apology. “And to do so without arousing the suspicions of my father, I need you to open a pathway to Niflheimr.”

Jane took another sip, the burning swallow somehow welcome. “Assuming I can even get the portals to work, how do you expect me to calibrate it for a place I’ve never even _heard_ of, let alone been to?”

“I have a gift for you.”

The pride in his voice had her giving him a decidedly wary look. “A gift, or a bribe?”

A slight flush began to build on his cheeks, and he ducked his head even as he set his cup aside, reached for a satchel she had not noticed on his other side. “I suppose in its way, it might be named both,” he murmured, and sighed as he extracted something from within. “Here.”

Jane accepted what felt to be a bound pile of thick vellum; it had no cover of its own, just a blank sheet of paper. When she flicked through pages that had the smooth consistency of fabric, she found them filled with shimmering ink that seemed to roll across the page like waves in water, breathing in a tide. It made her dizzy just to look at it. It was also in no language she knew, even as it whispered in her ear of stardust and solar storm.

“What is it?” she whispered, and Thor gave a chuckle that could almost be called self-conscious.

“Heimdall drew you a map.” Reaching over, he flicked through several pages, stopping when he came to a page that reminded her very much of the simple diagram he had drawn in her notebook all those days ago in New Mexico. This was far more practised, careful in its lines, the runic names translated into English; Midgard sat at the heart of great snow-white Yggdrasil, the other realms orbiting it as if it were the sun. His fingers traced reverent over the golden calligraphy of Asgard as he gave her a crooked sideways smile. “He also included some information about the Bifröst he thought you might find relevant to your studies.”

“ _Heimdall_?” Despite the excitement growing from deep inside her gut, from seed to sapling, Jane him a disapproving look she had to think would make even his mother proud. “Thor, how many times do you have to get that poor guy into trouble?”

“This is information he volunteered.”

“Yeah, but I’m betting your dad wouldn’t be entirely cool with it.”

“The Allfather is aware that you are gathering information relating to your work,” he countered, and she gave a scoffing little laugh even as she could not look away from her gift, mind already working at translating the notations into something she might able to use in her own calculations.

“Tricky,” she admitted. “But true. …thank you.”

Thor let her immerse herself for what could never be long enough; she was already contemplating going back inside for pen and paper when he spoke. “I cannot speak for such things myself, of course, but Heimdall has been watching you. This is the information he believes you will need.”

Her head jolted upwards. “ _Watching_ me?” she spoke to the sky, and then shook her head. “Yeah, that’s still creepy.” Then she smiled, raised a hand to the cleared skies all the same. “But thanks, Heimdall.”

Thor nodded, his own smile fading. “Though you are correct. While I could ask him to aid me in this, it is not something he could do without the knowledge of the Allfather – opening the Bifröst to Niflheimr, at least. It is not a place that is often travelled to.”

Jane hummed her assent, distracted by where she had traced what appeared to be leylines between Midgard and a realm with twinned names, as if split like a mirror with two sides. “So what’s the difference between Niflheimr and Helheimr, then?”

He did not seem surprised by the question. “Helheimr cannot be accessed by the living. The knife of which Angrboða spoke, this is one of the things it can do – it can cut through the space between.”

Frowning, Jane glanced down to the map again. “So it’s like a Bifröst in and of itself?”

“Not at all.” This time he really did pause, then spoke only with great reluctance that she could see as much as hear. “It severs connections between souls – whether it is the boundary of life and death, or between body and spirit.”

“The more I hear about it, the more I think this knife isn’t such a good idea.”

He did not protest her assertion, with hardly gave her any comfort. Instead he had turned very thoughtful, looking off into space; she sometimes wondered how far he could see, and what lay there she might never know about herself. “Does it make you feel any better about the situation,” he said, slow and careful, “if I tell you that Heimdall wishes me to do this?”

She frowned deeper. “What do you mean?”

“When he was very young, Loki had a habit of visiting Heimdall.” Something about this seemed both to amuse and sadden him, though it in turn seemed a private recollection. “He was very very good at slipping the notice of his minders and tutors, but invariably one would find him sitting on the edge of the rainbow bridge, staring off into space.”

That made her blink. “How did a kid get through those huge gates?”

“Heimdall.” Jane raised an eyebrow, and Thor’s fingers moved restlessly over his cooling mug. “He used to tell Mother he enjoyed the company, and that he took no issue with keeping an eye on her youngest son.” He paused, again, and then chuckled. “After all, he did the same whether from a distance or not.”

“They were friends?”

“One would think so. But as he grew older, Loki spent less and less time near the Observatory. Eventually he went only when he was required to use the Bifröst.” Any fondness for the memory had left him utterly now, and he shifted with an uncharacteristic stiffness upon the roof. “The point of the matter is that Heimdall was very familiar with Loki and therefore his energy signature.”

Jane let her mind turn over this new information, her eyes upon the carefully lettered realms before her. Asgard glittered like the star atop a Christmas tree, a benevolent angel holding court over those below. “You told him how you don’t dream of Loki.”

“When a sorcerer dies, there is a great release of energy back into the realms.” Any shake of his hands was masked by the way they tightened about the half-filled mug. “The more powerful they are, or the longer lived they have been, the more noticeable it is.” His fingers loosened, and he closed his eyes. “To those attuned to such things, at least.”

As much as she dreaded the answer, Jane could do nothing but ask the question. “Did he not feel it with Loki?”

“Our mother’s death caused a deep resonance in the weave.” His eyes had gone distant again, clouded with silver and sparking with plasma. “The shockwaves of it still reverberated. It is possible that to some degree Loki’s passing could have been masked by hers.”

“But you don’t believe that,” she whispered, and he shook his head.

“It is not my place to say.”

“But it _is_ Heimdall’s.” With a sigh, she stretched out one leg, swiped the toe of her boot over the brick. “Thor, he died.”

“I know that,” he murmured, and she felt rather than heard the spark of lightning in the thickening air as he looked to her at last. “Jane – I may only ask for your assistance. If you cannot give it freely, then I have no right to demand it of you.”

She looked away, but it did not help. Heimdall’s notes lay before her like a grimoire, opened and easy and true. “I always dreamed of going across the universe, when I was a little girl.” The whisper hung on the daylight like stars that had no business showing their faces outside of the dark. “I wasn’t even in a spaceship or anything. Just…flying. No wind in my hair, no sound. Just silence, with the stars all around me.”

“All I wished for was the glory of battle, in the midst of my comrades – with my brother at my side.”

Jane closed her eyes. The memory of Sif’s words burned like a brand in her memory, not at all cooled by the recollection of the ice-rain Thor had called down when she had stood at the heart of his storm. Even then, his grief had not broken. She had seen in him then the same dreadful stillness that had taken him after his brother’s death. It had not seemed real to him. Without Loki’s own word to the truth, she wondered if it ever would.

_But then, he’s always been a liar._

“I want to do it. It’s all I ever wanted.” She spoke into the darkness, voice a wavering light at its end. “But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I have already made my choice.”

“So have I, I guess.” Opening her eyes, she blew out an unsteady breath. “Oh, boy. I’m going to build _portals_. Through _space_. To _alien worlds_.”

His embrace took her like a storm; she shrieked, coffee cup loosed and rolling down the tiles before smashing on the pavement below. A distant _hey!_ rose up, but it didn’t matter. The strength of him coiled about her, his warmth bleeding beneath her skin with every thundering heartbeat.

“You know, this is going to take a while,” she whispered into his shoulder, hands tightening on his back. “Even with all this data, it’s not just a matter of clicking my fingers and hey presto, magic doorway through space.”

“I can wait.” His breath fluttered through her hair. “I have told both my father and SHIELD that I wish some time to myself. They may summon me if necessary, but otherwise I may do as I please.”

“You do need to take a break,” she said, drawing back, pushing her hair from her eyes as she gave him a wry grin. “Me, I think I’ve had one for long enough.”

“I am glad to see you so excited.”

“Well, it’s kind of scary too, but sure. It’s exciting.” Then her brow furrowed. “It’s just a pity Erik can’t help.”

“You do not wish to summon him back?”

“It wouldn’t be fair. He needs the break too – and besides, I think he’s learned you can’t just stop taking five different kinds of neuroleptic and still expect to be walking two days later.” Thor’s expression turned alarmed, and she gave a short chuckle; she’d figured that he hadn’t quite cottoned on to the concept of psychiatric medication, no matter how they’d tried to assure him that Erik’s choice had been a good one. “He’ll be okay, honestly. He just needs to rest and relax.”

“I am sorry for what my brother did to his mind.”

Jane’s fingers tangled together, nails digging into her knuckles. “To be honest, sometimes Erik can’t make his mind up about the whole thing. Sure, Loki used him as his little meat puppet and would have burned through him without giving a shit, but…he opened Erik’s mind. Or so he said.” Biting her lip, she tasted salt and iron. “Sometimes he almost makes it sound like it was worth it.”

From the expression on Thor’s face, he remembered as well as she did the relief in Erik’s eyes when he’d heard Loki was dead. Jane sighed, wished she hadn’t mentioned it at all. That water would always be polluted and stagnant, no matter how many bridges were built over it.

“But then again, I doubt it was.” Raising one hand, she cupped Thor’s cheek, gave a faint smile. “Either way, it’s not your fault. And it’s probably for the best anyway, because if I explained to Erik what you want me to do, he’s going to want to know why. And he’s not going to like it.”

His own hand rose, covered her own. The warmth of it could have been the sun so rarely seen in an English winter, no matter that spring inched closer by the hour. “Thank you, Jane,” he murmured, and she could have wept for the simple gratitude in his eyes. Instead, she looked away.

“Well, you know. A girl loves her science.”

For a moment she could say nothing. Then his hand dropped, and still she did not look up. “Shall we go inside?”

“You can, if you want. I might just…sit up here, for a while.”

She stayed for perhaps half an hour despite the chill of approaching dusk; it was barely five-thirty, and already the earliest stars had begun to venture to the first of their places for the evening. With her arms wrapped about her calves, chin perched in the valley between her knees, Jane waited for the sickle moon. There had been no moon at all the night she’d taken her father’s ashes to a storage unit in New York City. It hadn’tt been damaged by the Chitauri attack, but then it wasn’t exactly in Midtown. Not that she had been back to check. She’d known he was gone after that long flight, taken alone over the Atlantic from Norway.

“Sometimes we just need to see it for ourselves,” she said, soft, as it trying it aloud. Then she sighed, closed her eyes, and lay back on the roof as night truly took hold of the skies and refused to let go.

 

*****

 

With the passage of ten days, the flat looked like an explosion in a paper mill. Sifting through a pile for what seemed the hundredth time, Jane swore and tried again to remember where she had stashed the little piece of yellow notepaper she remembered writing a certain set of equations upon. Pushing back from the kitchen table she went into the living room, did a doubletake when she saw Ian sitting on the couch. With his long legs crossed underneath him, he was engrossed in a Jeremy Kyle rerun with ubiquitous cup of tea in hand. Glancing about, Jane noticed that he seemed utterly alone.

“Hey, where’s Thor?”

He started, blinked owlishly up at her as he craned around. “Oh. Hi, Jane.” Taking a sip of tea, he shrugged. “Darcy took him to the National Portrait Gallery.”

“What, _really_?”

That made him grin. “Yeah, she was telling him how they have portraits of the royal family there. He wanted to see Anne Boleyn and her daughter, after all those stories Darcy told him the other day. And then I think they were going to go past Buckingham Palace on the way back, or maybe as far as Windsor.” Taking another sip of his tea, his eyes slanted sideways as yet another relationship feud erupted into an all-out brawl upon the screen. “We were thinking of going to Hampton Court tomorrow, actually. You should come, it’s right pretty out there.”

“I would, but…” She sketched an arc about the flat with an almost helpless outstretched arm. “…things are kind of coming to a head. I should keep on with it while the going’s good.”

He narrowed his eyes at her in a way that couldn’t help but remind her of the way her father had been, during her exams at Columbia. “You’re getting _some_ sleep, right?”

“Usually.” Mirrors were definitely no longer her friend these days. “Well, enough, anyway. It’s fine, either way; I spent the last year bumming around, I figure I owe the universe a bit of make up time.”

He nodded. “Sure, I get it.”

“I…guess I should get back to it,” she said, and frowned at the textbooks opened on the coffee table. Coming around the couch, she reached for one, opened to one of the highlighted tabs she’d stuck there earlier that morning.

“Just let me know if you need anything.”

Jane stilled. She still wasn’t entirely sure what Ian even _did_. Darcy had taken leave from her own studies to help Jane in London, but even after all that had happened in Greenwich and beyond she had no idea of what poor Ian’s actual occupation was. Then another realisation hit her even harder.

“What’s your last name?”

“Boothby,” he replied with reflexive quickness, and then blinked. “Why?”

“I just…realised I didn’t even know.” Sitting back on her heels, she pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear before scrunching up her face and rubbing her fingers into the hollows of her eyes. “God, you must think I’m a flake.”

“Not really.” The sound of the television began to fade away, and she heard the click of the remote as he returned it to the table. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

“No, it’s fine.” But he was already waving her down, unfolding his legs. It seemed only a few moments later that she held a cup in her hands, the rich scent of bergamot like an elixir of life. No wonder they never seemed to stop drinking it.

“You all right?” he asked, and Jane sighed.

“I just wish I could spend a bit more time with Thor.” Then she winced. “Not that I’m not grateful for what you guys do! I just…yeah. You know.”

He nodded, and though she barely knew him, something in his expression told her without reserve that he did. “No, no, it’s fine. Fun, even.”

Jane could believe that – Thor was an enthusiastic and curious tourist, always happy to discover something different in the city. Three days earlier she had gone with him to the Tower of London. Tired as she had been from a night spent mostly engrossed in the first beginnings of one of her LC circuits, she’d not regretted a moment of it. He’d been only too happy to let her lean on him, the warmth and the bulk of his body like a giant teddy bear. She hadn’t drawn away, even as the spring air had begun to warm.

It probably shouldn’t have surprised her, but he’d been particularly enamoured of the Tower’s ravens. She hadn’t been sure what fascinated him more: the legends which said that should the Tower ever be without its ravens the Crown would fall and Britain with it, or that Ian had told him that the ravens could be considered enlisted members of the military – and that more than one had been dismissed for reasons stated as: “….conduct unsatisfactory, service therefore no longer required.”

Setting the cup down, she began to sift through one of the notebooks on the coffee table. Frowning at the Yorkie wrapper she found stuck between two of the pages, she gave Ian a searching look. “He’s not wearing you out, is he?”

Ian blinked, and then to her relief laughed outright. She’d been more concerned than she realised about the so-called training sessions. “He’s really a very good teacher, you know,” he assured her, and she felt her cheeks pink a little.

“I’ve always thought so.”

Fortunately Ian didn’t appear to notice her flush. “Not that I don’t feel badly for him, considering he can’t be getting much of a workout with me. He could probably run over to Putney and back without breaking a sweat before I even got through a set of ten pushups.”

“Well, he’s probably had a bit more practice,” she said with diplomatic ease, and he laughed outright.

“And twenty times more muscle mass. Though he showed me this leverage thing; I ended up tossing him right over my shoulder!” A moment later, his face fell. “…and then I said sorry. A lot. I fucking tossed _the god of thunder_ , what.”

“Because he let you,” Jane assured him, and Ian just shook his head.

“He couldn’t stop laughing.” Running a hand back through his hair, he reached again for his own teacup, took a long swallow. “He’s a nice guy.”

“So are you. Honestly, Ian. Thank you so much for helping me out.”

“Like I said, it’s fun. Maybe I can barely walk by the end of the day, but it’s cheaper than a gym membership.” He raised his cup in a wry toast, and she reached over to click her own against the fine chipped porcelain. “And he seems to enjoy it.”

Comfortable as the conversation had been so far, Jane took a long pause before voicing something she felt could ruin its ease. “Has he…said anything to you?” When Ian gave her a raised eyebrow, she pursed her lips. “About…about his brother, I mean?”

He turned very thoughtful, and for not the first time Jane thought that Darcy had been on to something very good, when she’d picked up Ian Boothby from wherever it was she’d found him. “He seems a pretty private guy. Darcy did say something to him yesterday while watching us, though.”

“Did she,” Jane said flatly, and Ian waved a hand.

“It was just something about their fighting styles being so different. She thought it would be cool to be a wizard. Thor pointed out that he’s not really going to be able to teach her much of that. Then she pointed to the hammer and was all: _doesn’t that count as a magic wand, or something? It’s got a long body and a big glowy bit on the end, right? And it shoots stuff too!_ ”

Jane put both hands over her eyes, groaning as she doubled over the coffee table. “Oh, _god_.”

“No, no, he seemed to think it was funny. Even offered to let her touch it, though she got all offended and asked him what kind of girl he thought she was, asking her to feel up the magic hammer of her best bud’s hot boyfriend.”

“She still totally did, didn’t she.”

“Oh, yeah. Gave her a hell of a shock, too.” At this he looked slightly mystified. “He said it was in revenge for her own small magic lightning box. I figured it was better not to ask.”

Straightening up again, Jane reached for her cup and took a long slug as though it were whisky on the rocks. “I can’t decide if I’m glad to miss out on this stuff or not.”

“You should have seen her yesterday. Did she tell you about that?”

“I haven’t seen her since Saturday,” she replied, voice clearly indicating this was likely for the best. Ian went on undaunted.

“We ended up taking Thor on a magical adventure to meet an NHS dentist. You can’t say we’re not introducing him to the local culture, I can tell you that. ”

“What did you _do_ to him?” Jane asked. Then she actually thought about it. “And _how_?”

“No, no, it was Darcy who needed the dentist. And she was fine. But she was talking rubbish while watching Thor try to teach me how to throw a decent punch, and he offered to show her, and…”

“…you’re not about to tell me the god of thunder punched my intern in the teeth, are you?”

Ian grinned over the rim of his cup. “Oh, no. Worse.”

Groaning, Jane caught a flicker of yellow from the corner of her eye, picked up another textbook. “Quick, tell me before I change my mind.”

Ian snickered. “She tried to climb him. Like, a monkey or something. I have no idea how she thought she was going to take him down, but there she was on his back, and he’s standing there looking bemused, so she says _Aw, hell with this!_ And then she bites him.”

Jane stared at him. “No!”

“Just about broke three of her teeth off.” Slurping up the last of his tea, he set the cup aside. “But she was okay. Though we told the dentist she bit a brick. On a dare.” Then he snorted. “Funny thing: after five minutes in her company, they completely believed us.”

Removing the yellow note from where she’d wedged it in the back of a text on quasars and the red shift, Jane rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “ _Darcy_.”

“Darcy,” he repeated, though with a reverence that made her heart skip a beat. “No-one else in the world quite like her.”

“I’m thinking the universe,” she muttered, but she couldn’t help her grin as she levered herself back to her feet. “I should probably get back to it. Thanks for the tea.”

“You’re welcome.” Reaching for the remote, he added, “Darcy and Thor are making dinner, by the way.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She says she’s going to teach him a thing or two about quesadillas, seeing as he didn’t get to try Izzy’s in New Mexico.”

Before the events of the last few weeks, thoughts of Puente Antiguo had just brought successive waves of nostalgia, frustration, anger, and despair. Now she remembered Izzy, short and round with a tongue as quick as a scorpion with her Spanish patois, and she grinned. “Hers will never be as good as Izzy’s, but they’re not bad. You’ll like them.”

“Well, there’s always the kebab shop on the corner if it doesn’t work out,” he said with glum philosophy, and she gave him a swat over his head.

“Thanks, Ian.”

Armed now with her yellow note and the equations scrawled upon it, Jane returned to the kitchen. Entire universes might open before her, and no matter the reason for it, her mind could not let her do anything else.

 

*****

 

“How is your work going?”

The voice shot through her like a lightning bolt, and she literally jumped in her chair; had his hand not reached to steady it, she would have fallen flat on her back. Arching around, she looked to him with wide eyes. “Oh _shit_ , I was supposed to come down like four hours ago for dinner.” Then she scrubbed one fist over her eyes, eyes barely adjusting to the dimness of her room. She hadn’t even realised how dark it had become. “I’m so sorry.”

Thor took a seat on her unmade bed, nothing in his stance displaying he’d taken any offense at her distraction. “There is some leftover. Do not be too worried; we did not wish to disturb your work.”

The thought of the food didn’t bother her. Even now she couldn’t say that she was even hungry. The twist in her lower abdomen was instead something closer to the vice-like grip of guilt. “Did Ian like it?” she asked weakly, and Thor’s eyes took on a shifty look.

“I…believe so. He added some non-traditional sauces to his. I am not sure Darcy will ever forgive him.”

She had to laugh. “Give her half an hour, she’ll be dragging him back into her room by his ear,” she said, and twisted her seat around so she could lean forward, clasped hands resting on her knees. “How was the gallery?”

His face all but lit up. “Fascinating! I am still somewhat confused by your current political situation, though Darcy has been doing her best to give me a decent grounding. It was nice, though, to see something of more familiar monarchical system. But while she tells me there is yet a Queen here in England, Elizabeth of House Windsor wields no true power of her own. It seems…odd, indeed, that a parliament should make all decisions in her name instead.”

Though alien political policy was far more Darcy’s game than hers, curiosity still pricked at the edges of her mind. “Does your father rule alone?”

“No king does. He has his councils and his advisors, but in the end it is the Allfather’s word that becomes law.” His expression turned distant, again. She was growing to hate that reminder of how far apart their lives truly were. “As a boy, I thought there could be nothing better than to be the centre of such influence and power.”

Shifting in her chair, Jane wondered how to summon him back to Earth. “Would your father’s advisors still be there to help you?”

That made him blink, look back. “Of course. Though I had always assumed…” His whole body tightened, as if a great brace of heavy rainclouds had settled upon his broad shoulders. “…you must think me a fool.”

“What?”

He looked down to his hands, twisted in some Gordian knot before him. “That I should have trusted so deeply in one who has betrayed me in this way,” he said, soft, and her throat tightened. Loki. Of course, _Loki_. Everything always came back to Loki.

_He was his brother for a thousand years. Your mother’s home country hasn’t even existed that long._

“But he wasn’t always like this,” she said, hesitant; Thor glanced up, the pain in his eyes like a blow to the gut.

“Some might say otherwise. I would…not like to believe it. But in the time since his return from Midgard, I wondered.” He glanced down, again, to the hands that so easily wielded a hammer whose weight would not permit any other person to so much as handle her. “Could a thousand years of brotherhood be set aside in merely one?” he whispered, and Jane could taste salt upon her tongue.

“It was a lot to happen. To both of you.”

“He changed. Too much, too quickly. And yet, on Svartálfaheimr…” He took a deep rasping breath, drew himself up, leaned backward. “…for a moment, it was as if nothing had changed. We were together again. Brothers upon the battlefield.”

That particular episode came with many gaps in her own memory, both of the journey and of the final confrontation. Yet she still remembered how Loki had felt, when he’d curved over her as the aether had solidified, falling to the arid ground in jagged crystals. The coiled power of him had been that of a great cat upon the prairie, hungry and lean – and while he shielded her, that power had been focused entirely upon his brother and what he had done.

Jane had no idea what had passed between them when they had been all but alone. She’d been dreaming under the influence of the aether, fascinated and repulsed alike, though she could barely recall a moment of it now. But she had sensed the _shift_ between them, had watched as they had effortlessly fallen into a pattern of movement that was wordless and near-telepathic. How telling it seemed, that it had not fallen apart until that last moment – when the blade he had thrust through Kurse had in turn been thrust through him. All they had been left with then had been a parody of an embrace, death given willingly in the name of love.

_You fool. You didn’t listen_.

But then, Jane had the feeling the brothers had never known how to listen to one another. And she rather suspected it had rather a lot to do with why things had turned out this way.

“He was your brother,” she said, and her voice did not tremble. “Your little brother. How could you do anything but trust him? Love him?”

The naked pain mixed with the shock upon his face as he stared at her. She had to wonder if there was anyone on Asgard who could have said such a thing to him, now that his mother was gone. A large hand rested gentle upon her face as the other drew her close. But she turned her cheek, lips grazing her jaw. The storm at the cemetery felt too close yet – so much high emotion, pressed upon her. Willingly as she had taken it then, she had known it to be a weight not meant for her to bear, considering the emotion behind it had never been hers to accept.

She thought again of Sif, her face grave and lovely across the table with Asgardian a glittering shadow below, and her heart ached.

“Jane?”

“It’s okay. It’s just…I would’ve come down to dinner. I was about to, actually, and then I just…I think I know what’s going on. I’m so close.”

“Really?”

His delight held all the strength of that of a child on Christmas morning. She couldn’t hold it against him. She felt the same way when she didn’t consider exactly what the fruits of her research would allow to happen. “Really. We need a power source, though. And I mean, a _serious_ power source.” Not that she hadn’t considered where she might find one. “But then, you know Tony Stark, right? Maybe you could call him and ask if we can, I don’t know, borrow an arc reactor or something?”

A faint shadow flitted across his face, like Icarus before the sun. And then he shook his head. “It will not be necessary. I have a power source of my own.”

She blinked, and then it clicked into place. “Mjölnir. The storm.” Even as her emotional mind shied away from the memory of the storm in the cemetery, her analytical side leapt upon the potential with a hunger too fierce to be denied. “I…yeah. That could work. It really could. I think.”

“Would you like me to show you?”

“I…well, just a little. Let me get some gear.” She then thought of Mjölnir, hung quiescent upon a coat peg by the front door, and her expression turned dubious. “But I’m thinking we’re going to have to go and do this outside somewhere.”

They could have used the tiny backyard but they shared it with three neighbours and after Darcy’s first and last disastrous barbeque attempt, Jane felt scorching the lawn again really wouldn’t be fair. Instead they cut through the living room and went out onto the balcony. Ian and Darcy were nowhere in sight, and she slid the door tightly closed before turning to Thor and tilting her head to a critical angle.

“Can you make just a _little_ lightning? You know, nothing dramatic? Just a fraction of what it could be?”

He gave her a raised eyebrow and a hurt look. “I do know the meaning of the word _subtlety_ , Jane, have no fear.”

“Yeah, well.”

And that got her a great booming laugh, one that echoed about the sky like thunder. A moment later he thrust Mjölnir to the sky as if he might split it in twain – and some part of her wondered if he could. Even in jeans and a t-shirt, Thor was a god made flesh and blood. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, that he could call down to himself an arc of light from the sky, heralded late by a mighty crack of thunder. Then he held it out to her like a prince offering his kingdom: the gleaming uru head, sparking with potential and power. The crackle of it burrowed under her skin, the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck standing up to fierce attention. She did not even need to look to her instruments.

“Yeah. …yeah, I think this will work.”

Thor let the hammer drop, trails of plasma dissipating through the air in its wake. Jane blinked against the light. Her _teeth_ hurt. The air tasted roasted, too, and she shook her head to clear the buzzing in her ears. Still she was grinning, and she didn’t even know why.

“I hope that’s not what you showed Darcy, when you let her hold Mjölnir.”

“Not at all. Mjölnir just wanted to show Darcy a little trick of her own.” Twisting the hammer in his grip, he gave her a look from under his eyelashes that held a look entirely too mischievous to suit him. “But she rather likes you.”

She had to laugh, though it came out a little too high and startled for her liking. “…you know, my last boyfriend had a way too intense relationship with his Mustang. I’m starting to wonder if I should be jealous of a hammer.”

“Oh, I do mean what I said. She really does like you. You needn’t worry.”

Giving the hammer a look both awed and askance, Jane licked her dry lips. “…right.”

“Would you like to touch her?”

He meant it in all kindness, she knew, and yet somehow the invitation held the faint sulphurous heat of a deal with the devil. When she swallowed her tongue rasped over a dry mouth, and she could not help but stare at her. _Mjölnir_. Forged from the heart of a dying star, he had said. That would render her a singularity made real, a stark impossibility in the terms of any scientific reality she understood. Anyone who held her ought to always be falling towards eternity and yet never ever reaching the end she could promise.

And then she thought of standing on the rainbow bridge. She’d looked down without fear; her curiosity would never have allowed her to do otherwise. Then she’d noticed the strange fused fissure close to the Observatory. She’d stepped back only when she’d recalled Thor’s story of how it had broken. Loki had fallen into forever. Even now the thought of it sent a shiver down her spine.

“Nah, it’s okay,” she said with a practised calm, and he looked taken aback.

“Are you certain?”

“Yeah. I’m sure. Maybe later.” In truth she had no idea what held her back, especially as Darcy had done it. But her fingers twitched, and not in a good way. She kept them in her pockets, even as Thor cast his eyes about the balcony.

“So, you do not think we could do this here?” he said, and she shook her head.

“No. Not a good idea. Too many civilians.” Not to mention she had no idea if SHIELD were catching any wind of all this. She was still waiting for Sitwell to come swooping in and confiscate everything she had done so far. Then she sighed. “But I’m not really sure where else we could go.”

Thor did not skip a beat. “The forest we went when we first spoke of this.”

The idea sat ill in her mind, like someone else’s thought had been pushed through her skull and lodged uncomfortably there. But she could think of no logical reason to say no. “I…yeah. Okay. What the hell. We’re opening a portal to the land of the dead, what better place to do it from than the western side of Highgate Cemetery?”

He could still hear her reluctance, and his hands were cool where they tilted her face towards his. “Jane.” Everything of his gaze burned true, and gentle. But all flames still had heat enough to turn all in their path to ash and dust.

“If you wish to back out now,” he murmured, “I will not hold it against you.”

_I don’t believe you_. The thought came unbidden, sharp and bitter. But still she smiled.

“No.” He arm moved sideways, indicating the forest of paper just inside the sliding door, Heimdall’s gleaming book spread open upon the back of the couch. “You gave me this. I owe you.”

His gaze grew searching, uncertain. “I do not wish it to be a matter of debt between us.”

“It’s not. _Really_.” With a smile that she hoped did not look as forced as it felt, she looked up to him, resting one hand just over his heart. “I just…I just want you to be…better, I guess. With everything that’s happened. And if I can help you with that, then I will. No regrets.”

He laid his palm over hers, his smile too bright to look at. “Thank you.”

“It’s okay.”

When he had gone inside, Jane leaned upon the balcony and looked up to the clear star-strewn sky so far overhead. She had to wonder if anything would really ever be okay again.


	5. 1.5: Kinetics

After two days of fine-tuning her instruments – during which Ian, Darcy, and Thor took a day trip to Brighton not one of them would tell her anything about, though she suspected the trending hashtag # _thehammerishispenis_ on Twitter would have given her more information that she could ever want to know – Jane collared Thor after dinner and whispered that tomorrow would be the day in his ear. From the way he’d swept her up into a fierce embrace Darcy had assumed they were going to spend the night engaged in what she called some “thunderstruck lurvin,” though in fact Jane had taken three zopiclone and slept like the dead. Thor, she suspected, had spent most of it out on the roof, making his way through an oversize thermos of coffee.

The day was already overcast and few people were out for a walk at six in the morning. Jane blew out a chill breath, adjusting the strap of the bag over her shoulder. Thor had offered to carry it, but there wasn’t a lot of weight to it. Besides, it felt good to have tangible proof of her work as they walked through the park. He’d not said much else since. Even on the bus ride over Thor had been very quiet. She’d left him to his thoughts, uncertain as to why she chose now to break the silence.

“I never did read a lot about Norse mythology. Maybe I should have, but…” She gave a little self-conscious shrug, catching the strap where it threatened to slip off her shoulder. “…when I thought you were going to come back, I wanted to wait. To see what you would tell me, I guess. I wanted to hear it the way you would tell it.” She felt his eyes upon her, but she kept hers firmly ahead. “And then later, when you didn’t, it was just…too painful.”

“I see.”

Jane was not entirely sure he did. But then she had not known of his loss, of his own pain in those days after his brother had fallen. In the end there remained so much that they did not know of each other. The simple truth was that they possibly never would.

“But I was reading something earlier,” she went doggedly on, and he did not object.

“Yes?”

For not the first time Jane wondered how familiar he was with the myths, and the way they likely mangled both his people and his own family history. “They say that Hela is one of Loki’s children,” she said, very careful, and his brow furrowed deeply.

“Ah.”

When he said no more, hands firmly unseen beneath the swathe of his cloak, Jane swallowed. Yet she could sense nothing in his mood that forbade further inquiry. “Is that…true?”

“Not at all.” For a moment it looked like he might say something else, and then what he did say seemed very much at odds with the thoughts that moved like stormclouds behind his eyes. “He has spoken to her on varying occasions, this I know, but they share no blood.”

“Are you sure?”

Again, he did not seem to resent the question. “Hela is older than he.” And now he was the one to look firmly ahead while she glanced over at him, the solid profile only growing in power as the light strengthened in the eastern sky. “At any rate, Loki has no children of his own. We are both still young, by Asgardian standards – and Mother was always very careful to have us understand the consequences of our actions, when we sought our pleasure in the company of women.”

He spoke without any awkwardness, though it felt as if her chest had been victim to a half-hearted defibrillation. Fleetingly she wondered if that was why their own relationship had never progressed beyond a certain line that she herself had never thought to draw. But then she suspected matters were far more complicated than only that.

“In retrospect, I suspect now that Father would never have permitted it,” Thor went on, and shook his head. “For Loki to father children, I mean. While Loki seemed always unaware of the spell that masked his heritage, I am not certain even Father could have constructed something of that kind over his own child without Loki noticing.”

A thought moved her mind to strange shadows, unbidden and strange: _the Mother of monsters_. She shivered, though Thor did not appear to notice.

“Of course, he did have an interest in – and considerable skill with – the arts of midwifery, but it is hard to say if that was because of Mother’s influence. She had much to do with marriage and childbirth throughout the realms.”

The Loki she had so briefly known seemed hardly the type of person she’d want at her bedside during labour. But then, Jane hadn’t known him before. A thousand years could bring about many changes in a person. The past hundred years had completely changed the current way of life for so many mortals, after all.

_But then, at heart, we’re likely still the same greedy grubbing bastards we were when we had fire and sticks instead of space shuttles and Netflix._

“Do you want children?” she asked, sudden and strange. He raised an eyebrow.

“Of course. Do you not?”

In the awkward silence that followed, Jane had no idea what to say. Instead she scuffed her feet along the path, knuckles white about the strap of her satchel.

“I’ve never really thought about it,” she admitted finally, her cheeks very warm though her heart felt to be fashioned from ice. “I just…I have my work. I guess it’s almost like my child. Takes up about as much time, anyway.”

“But does it offer you love the way a child would?”

She fought back the urge to give in to hysterical laughter; swallowing it down only left it as a cold hard lump low in her stomach. “I don’t know.”

They crossed the lane in silence, before going around the road to enter the cemetery in the same way as they had almost two weeks earlier. Jane still cast a nervous look around, though she could see nobody. It was early enough in the morning that she doubted any tours would be operating, but she still took them as deep into the cemetery as she could while avoiding the larger structures. A convergence of three paths provided enough space for her calculations, the forest canopy open to the sky above.

“So,” she breathed, and carefully set her satchel down on a bed of fallen leaves. “Here goes nothing.”

Using a GPS, she set up a triangular grid with one device to each corner. They rested on low poles not dissimilar to the gravitational devices Erik had been running about with at Stonehenge. As Thor helped her hammer them into the ground, she let the faint hint of guilt wash over her. Erik was in some private facility with no idea what she was doing, nor how many physical laws of their universe she was rewriting every time she so much as breathed. She knew how badly he’d have wanted to see this happen – for her sake, as much as his own.

When it was done she sat back on her heels, brushing dirt and leaves from her palms. “This is really going to be nowhere near as elegant as the Bifröst,” she warned. Thor only laughed, shedding the cloak to reveal the armour he wore beneath, Mjölnir glinting at his hip.

“I am certain it will be fine,” he reassured her and she took a shaky breath.

“Right then, sparky. Time to do your thing.”

She doubted she would ever get used to it: seeing him with Mjölnir held high, calling down the sky as if it were but vassal to his king. Within moments he began to channel the filamented energy into the capacitor. The focused energy chattered like overexcited children, the waves crashing and overlapping, working themselves into a fierce resonance that left the air tasting of ozone and iron. She felt the world shift beneath her feet and she _laughed_ ; the air before her seemed made of a thousand colours and she could not name a single shade. Again she tilted the dials and knew that she was breaking through unseen barriers, particles excited beyond the limits their mortal minds had so long ago imposed upon them. Fingers trembled as she tuned her circuit to the resonant frequency of a realm beyond imagination, and yet her thoughts had never been so clear.

“Hold on to your butts,” she muttered around a screw she held between her teeth, and Thor glanced over from where he continued pulsing energy into what might have passed for a clockwork Leyden jar at a steampunk convention.

“Must I?”

And Jane laughed again, the sound as pure and simple as the power pulsing beneath her fingers. No wonder Loki had enjoyed teasing him. “I’d do it for you, but my hands are already full.” And she tightened them again about the two dials, muttered a brief prayer to no known gods, and then grinned wider yet. “In one, two—”

Each corner flashed, silver-bright and sweet. The gear beneath her fingers began to grind, and then _shriek_ – then suddenly then was only silence and she was on her back, staring at the sky far above. She scrabbled for her feet, the air feeling thick and strange, reflective and kaleidoscopic, like it was made of soap bubbles. A moment later she fell to her knees, hands over her mouth, stuck somewhere between tears and laughter.

“Holy _shit_.”

“Jane.” And he was sweeping her up, holding her tight, lips against her forehead. “You are brilliant.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am.” She waved at his chest, demanded to be landed; as soon as her feet touched the ground she scampered back over to the triangulation. Her breath caught in her throat; the beauty of even so crude a construction left her speechless. She reached forward, stopped just short of touching the soft ripple where the portal spread open from the centroid point of the triangle. “…although maybe you could save that until we’ve actually turned up in the right place,” she muttered, and he chuckled.

“I believe in you.”

She glanced up, the simple truth of his words as potent as any spoken spell. Accepting his outstretched hand, she grasped the strap of her satchel, reshouldered it. A pat reassured her that a mirrored set of the same components existed within. Taking a deep breath one last time, she looked to the portal before them. “Well, then,” she breathed, and then gave him an arch look. “In we go?”

He only grinned. With hands laced together they stepped forward, and then leapt into the unknown.

 In truth travel in this fashion was nothing like the Bifröst. She did not know if she had folded space in such a way as to make it faster, or if there was some sort of relative time dilation at play, but in truth she barely felt the journey at all. There was a brief sensation of _stretch_ , as if she were a piece of taffy anchored between two very different points, yet before it could hit the threshold of pain she felt a distinct _snap_ , and then she fell forward. Thor tumbled after her, and with their hands joined it seemed inevitable that they were but a tangle when she realised they had come out the other side.

“I _warned_ you,” she said before he could say a word; Thor just sat up, rubbing his head.

“I see no problem.”

“Ow,” she muttered, her own head feeling like it had been on a spin cycle as she pushed herself upright. By contrast he seemed not to feel the repercussions of so inelegant a journey. Noticing her scowl, he gave her a wry smile instead.

“I suffered much worse while learning to fly with Mjölnir,” he explained, though his good humour darkened as he turned his face to the distant horizon. “Though we shall not use her now.”

“Why not?”

“It would be better to approach on foot.” Again he stood, a hand extended towards her. “We shall go now to Éljúðnir.”

The hall of the queen of the dead – Heimdall had marked it upon his map, and she had set the portal to bring them within its perimeter. She could not pronounce the word to save her life, but in Thor’s voice it shivered across her skin. It was made only worse when Thor disrupted the serene ripple of the portal with a pulse from Mjölnir, the open passage home collapsing like a dissipating raincloud. Her hand pressed tight over her satchel, though she smiled when he glanced at her, chin held high.

What she saw did little to ease any of her tension. A desolate landscape stretched in all directions, so washed out of colour it was like being a movie tinted in sepia. In fact it reminded her of Victorian photographs of the dead. The faces that had stared out of those frames had been as static and still as the next, leaving the viewer unable to tell the living from those passed onward.

There was not a soul present to ask directions of, but it did not matter considering only one road lay before them. Paved and simple, it ran in an unyieldingly straight line. A building waited in the far distance, though it was hard to see anything of it behind its great walls. As they drew closer, Jane looked uneasily about the landscape. In comparison to the relative flatness of where they had first begun, it now began to rise in oddly symmetrical hillocks, uniform in size and dispersal.

“What are these things?”

Thor did not even glance to them. “Barrows.”

“Like…tombs, or something?” she asked, struggling with what little memory she had of Scandinavian history. Thor’s unmoving expression did little to help her unease.

“Something to that effect.”

And yet still she could feel the creeping sensation across her skin of being watched. More than once she had to cast a look back over her shoulder. It seemed ironic, then, that when the first of them came she saw it standing not five metres before her.

Thor stopped, hand moving to Mjölnir. Another figure joined the first while Jane’s heart skipped yet another beat she didn’t really feel it had to spare. Their movements were awkward and clumsy, their faces devoid of expression and thought. They could be little more than dead-eyed corpses, despite their pallor resembling nothing so much mummified bodies pulled from the bogs of ancient Britain. Jane bit down hard on her terror, and almost wanted to laugh.

“Do I even _want_ to know what those are?”

He did not pause nor flinch away. “Draugar.”

“Like…zombies?”

“I do not know this word.”

“I wish I didn’t,” she muttered, and cradled her satchel close to her chest. “What do we do?”

“They guard the road to Éljúðnir.” Mjölnir came to his palm, fingers wrapped knowing about her shaft. “We must defeat them.”

And Jane laughed, high and trembling. “Yeah. Um. No offense, but I always figured that in the zombie apocalypse I was going down with the first wave.”

He gave her a brilliant grin, and in the melancholy of Helheimr he blazed like a supernova rendered in golden-scarlet light. “I myself have never been good with surrender.”

Thor threw himself into the battle with all the beauty of a lion about his hunt, grace and fierce feral fury in every movement he made. The sheer beauty of him stole every sane thought away. Jane had never really figured she much cared about the physical, though she’d looked as much as Darcy had that first morning (though she’d had enough sense to keep her thoughts to herself, at least). The gloom of the landscape only marked him as all the more extraordinary.

A moment later, she shook herself free of the reverie. She really didn’t know if she ought to run for cover, but then the only cover available appeared to be the barrows – and as what Thor had called draugar were emerging from them still, it hardly seemed the most tactical spot to aim for.

But she couldn’t stand too close to him. Not with the way he spun and whirled, the hammer a song upon the air. Even at this short distance he set her skin alight, hair crackling, rising; there was no wind, but she might as well have pressed both hands to an electrostatic generator. When she swallowed hard, it was against a dry throat, the air humming with charge and current.

Yet they did not come for her. The stench of death and decay rose with their shambling movements, ruined armour clanking with every forced step though they wielded no weapons. The weight and sound of them made her wince where Mjölnir slammed into their dead flesh – and yet she wrought no damage, drew no blood, cracked no bone. Momentum might take them down but then they would rise again, one after the other, over and over again.

“Thor!”

He gave no answer, though she had not quite expected one. That need to cry out to him again still rose up in her again as she clutched frantically at the satchel. But despite the terror of what came towards her, she did not want to seem a damsel in distress. Casting a look around, she didn’t bother to repress a violent storm of cursewords. She could see no weapons, not even a stick.

And yet still they came, lurching from what she supposed were their graves, drawn to Thor as if magnetised.

And then they burst, falling like skittles taken down by a vicious strike. Thor ran from their centre, dashing towards her. They swarmed about where he had been but they did not follow.

Even as instinct told her to run screaming, she latched onto his arm, eyes wide. “Thor, what are you doing?”

Breathing hard, he looked back, eyes narrowed. “Ah.”

“ _What_?”

“It is Mjölnir that draws them.” Drawing his arm over his forehead, he appeared to curse in a language she had no hopes of understanding. “We shall have to leave her.”

“What?” Jane noticed for the first time he did not hold his hammer, and her fear peaked at an entirely new level. “Can you _do_ that?”

“They cannot lift her.” Something close to pity had risen in his eyes, and his hand had curled tight about her own. “This is not Valhalla, Jane. They are souls who have been given to the care of Hela, to guard her hall and her person. No weapon will defeat them.” Now he bowed his head, a kind of reverence in the gesture that she had only seen in old soldiers in silent contemplation before memorials on Veteran’s Day. “But they were warriors, once. They yearn to hold a weapon again, so they might enter Valhalla after all.”

Jane’s voice held a floating quality, distant and miserable. “But they cannot lift her.”

“But they cannot lift her.”

For all her heart still feared them, when Jane looked back to where they crowded hopelessly about the hammer she could only see the terrible tragedy of it all. And at its centre lay Mjölnir: proud, shining, altogether too beautiful in the dimness of this washed-out world.

It was not much further to the end of the road. The gates stood open, which seemed odd after the episode of the draugar. A moment later she then she saw why: no road lay beyond those opened gates, only a great pit that appeared to have no end at all.

“Great.” Crossing her arms over her chest Jane shivered. Much as she had never quite liked flying under Mjölnir’s power, she rather missed the option now. “So what do we do?”

“We cross over.”

The choice of words twisted in her gut. “Are you _insane_?”

“Perhaps we both are, to have come so far.” Again he folded his hand around hers, and nodded to the way before them. “Come.”

“Thor—”

Jane didn’t even have time enough to shriek; they were on solid ground one moment and the next they were walking on nothing on nothing but air. Her mind could have been little more than a bubble for all it felt to have any weight or thought, and she did not look down. Had Thor not been Asgardian she was fairly certain the terrified strength of her grip would have crushed every bone in his hand.

And, amazingly, she laughed. “What is this, a walk of faith?”

And he looked always and only ahead. “Perhaps you could call it that.”

Even when they reached the end Jane still didn’t look down to see what lay under her feet now. Instead she walked at his side up a short set of steps, her eyes damp and her legs barely strong enough to support what little of her weight there was. The doors of the building also spread wide open, but a figure waited for them there.

As with Angrboða she was a dark-haired woman, but that was where the similarities ended. Where the Jötunn had been boyish and lean, this woman was voluptuous and terribly sensual for a creature associated more with death than birth. But then, sloe-eyed and with lips very red, she would seem hardly out of place in a production of _Dracula_.

Thor paused in their rise, bowed his head. “My Lady Ganglöt.”

She returned the gesture. “My Lord Odinson.” Her eyes flickered only momentarily over Jane. “You come to see my mistress.”

“I do.”

She turned, the long robes she wore fanning out about her like an opened seashell. Jane struggled to keep up with the quick pace she set, though she had breath enough to hiss one question. “That’s not Hela?”

“No.”

“But you know her?”

Thor still did not look back. “We have met.”

After that, Jane kept her silence. It did not feel right to say more, though her mind churned with unspoken questions.

They walked for what seemed half a mile, never deviating from the columned corridor; when Jane glanced to the sides she could see a maze of other hallways branching off into the darkness, but could see little of where they might lead. At its end the hall had been swathed in great veils, and they had the gossamer lightness of spiderwebs when Jane pressed them aside enough to that she might pass through.

On the other side waited a grand room, like the inside of a glacial cave. A dais rose up at its furthest end, and from it came yet more stairs that climbed into a faint blue-lit darkness of the unseen high ceiling. No throne sat at any height, and only one person waited there, seated halfway up on one of those marbled stairs.

It was a child. Jane’s heart clenched. Despite possessing hardly a maternal bone in her body, the realm that acted as the gateway to that of the unquiet dead was not a place one would wish to see a young girl. Seated upon the stairs that seemed to lead nowhere, she stared off into the distance, scarcely seeming aware that she was no longer alone.

Then she turned, and Jane drew a sharp breath. The girl looked no older than six or seven, and might have been the beginnings of a great beauty once upon a time. But while one eye blinked out from beneath a floating mass of blonde curls, the green iris sharp and knowing, the other side of her face was a ruin. The babyish curve of her skull had been destroyed by the droop of a shattered orbital bone, its eyebrow singed long away; her skin had puckered and darkened like she had been burned in a dreadful fire that should have taken her life with her looks. The wisps of hair that remained upon her scalp hung lank and white, yellowing towards the split and ragged ends. The white dress she wore, laced and embroidered and lovely, did not mask the skeletal arm and hand of that same side.

Slapping a hand over her mouth was nowhere near as rude as the horrified sound it held back. But Thor showed no surprise at her appearance. Elegant and easy in his movements he stepped forward, scarlet cape rippling in the darkness, a prince utterly within his element. Before the dais he went fluidly down upon one knee, fist pressed to his chest over his heart, eyes fixed blue and steady upon her.

“My Lady Hela.”

She inclined her small head, and smiled as if the sun itself had turned its golden light upon her alone. The hands she reached out to him had both palms open, turned to the unseen ceiling high overhead. “My Lord Odinson.”

Without guile or hesitation he closed his fingers over hers, the small hands all but lost in his much greater ones. “It has been some time indeed since last we met.”

“So it has been.” Her voice had all the lightness of a child’s tone, but a rawness underlay each word, as if her throat bled with every articulation. And her expression turned to sorrow, one far older than her physical appearance should ever have allowed for. “It is a pity, too, for your mother kept always such a merry court. I envy you the time you spent in the company of our lady Frigga, and mourn with you her passing.”

Thor’s own voice had become very thick, his head bowed before her. “I thank you, Lady Hela.”

“There is no need. I mourn where it is just.” Though she paused for scarcely a moment, it was enough to sit ill upon his bent shoulders. “I was sorry, too, to hear tell of your brother.”

Even with the distance between them, Jane could see the faint filaments of faith sparking in the blue of his eyes when he looked up to her again. “Then you know why I am here?”

With surprising gentleness Hela withdrew her hands from his. Thor let her go without protest. “Not precisely. Though I suspected from the moment you stepped foot from the fissure torn into the walls of my queendom that you would seek me in his name.” At that moment she looked away from him, her one good eye focusing with dreadful curiosity upon Jane herself. She stiffened, but could not move. “You have brought a mortal before me.”

Thor nodded at her flat observation. “She is Jane Foster, of Midgard.” The soft pride in his voice curled about her with all the comfort of an embrace. “It is she who facilitated our entrance.”

It was only one word, and yet she could barely voice it aloud. “Hello.”

Hela had already turned from her, the half-rosebud lips pulled into a sudden grimace. “I would take some offense at your presumption in how you chose to come here without invitation, but then I do not imagine you act with the blessing of the Allfather. You also passed the minor trial I lay before you, so you do not want for passion in your quest.”

Of course it was her temper that got the better of her, the words exploding from her with indignant disgust. “Is that what that was? A _test_?”

The little not-girl turned to her with a serpent’s ease; she would not miss her strike unless she intended it. “It was not meant for you, Jane Foster. It was the wisdom and restraint of the Thunderer I wished to gauge.” Even that girlish voice cracked like a whip, sharp and stinging. “And this is my home. Have I not the right to defend it, when it is breached by those I have not invited within its walls?”

“I…” Ducking her head, Jane felt the sharp misery of a fool called out on her mistake. “I’m sorry.”

She waved her good hand, the gesture oddly more suited to an octogenarian than a very small girl. “There is no need. I know it was not your desire that brought you here.” The oddly girlish giggle that escaped her then was more tired than amused. “The Odinson has rather a reputation for leading those about him on quite the merry dance when it comes to his will and his whims.”

Thor’s expression bore clear hurt. “My Lady, this is no whim.”

“I did not believe it was.” Something like pity entered her expression, then, though the slant of her one eye reminded Jane oddly of the way cats eyed birds in the garden through the glass of their window. When she spoke again, Hela’s voice had turned very low, thoughtful as a dreamer. “The bonds of fate always bound you two together, very closely indeed. It is not so strange, that you would chafe at the unravelling of it.”

His mouth worked. As Jane watched him she could sense the taste of the storm in her own mouth, thinking of how it had felt when he had pressed it into her. It had been too much power indeed, for one not born to it.

“I would speak with my brother, again.”

“Your brother has not passed through my hall.”

At those words he drew in a shuddering breath, and for the first time Jane realised his fear – that he had been wrong, that a single good deed at the end of one’s life could never make up for the wrongness of those many before it. “I know that no living being might pass to Valhalla and return as he was, but…I have heard tell of an item in your possession that might allow me to part the veils between us, so that we might speak one final time.”

One heel drummed against the step behind it, and Jane winced. Hela had the appearance of a little girl, but then one could mistake her for anything but – much as Thor himself might pass for a man, if only seen from great distance. And now Hela leaned forward, her chin on a fist made from fingers chubby yet with baby fat, and neither smiled nor frowned.

“I see.”

Thor took a fortifying breath, somehow appeared humble enough despite his great size, the sheer gleam that followed him about as if he were a sun himself. “I would borrow it, if you might be generous enough to lend it to my hand.”

“I see,” she repeated. But then she looked to Jane, and tilted her head so that the curls of her right side tumbled like a waterfall over one slim shoulder.

“You come to me, but you do not truly believe.”

Jane started, spine turning quite to water even as she met that probing gaze. “What?”

“A mortal scientist. It is his need that drives you to me, not your own.” She paused, seemed to listen to some unheard voice, and then gave a little chuckle. “Oh, he gifts you knowledge in return for your aid. But do you even believe it is _possible_ , to do what he wishes?”

Though she could feel his eyes upon her, Jane kept her attention fixed entirely upon Hela alone. “It’s not my belief that matters.”

The one remaining eyebrow rose. “How curious you make me,” she murmured, and now she laced both finger-bone and flesh together, giving her a considering look that reminded her of those to whom she had defended her thesis years ago. “Do you even believe that the dead still go on, after they pass from the world of the living?”

The weight of the urn in her hands had been so much less than she’d expected of it. She’d never even had the urge to speak to it. In the end her roommate had ended up so disturbed by the casual way she kept it on the mantelpiece that she’d finally stuck it in her closet. Often enough Jane had forgotten it was there, until she’d relocated to New Mexico and left him in her storage unit in Brooklyn.

No, she did not know where her father was now. But he had left the world he’d known and she’d never felt that he’d wanted to come back.

“I don’t know,” she said, honest, and Hela frowned.

“But do you not wonder, what your father would think of you now?”

“Well, if he’d seen me about a month ago, I’d guess he’d have been disappointed. Now, he’d be so happy for me.” And she shrugged, still very carefully not looking to Thor at all. “But in the end, it’s me who has to live my life. Sure, I wish he was here. But he’s not. Life goes on.”

“Yet you follow an Asgardian to the limits of the living so he might speak again to his dead brother.”

“We come from different worlds.” And now she swallowed around the lump in her throat, hands forming into fists as if she stood on the very precipice of a battle she hadn’t realised she would need to fight. “But we’re friends. And I do what I can for those I love.”

“Very good.”

The offhand kindness of it had her taking a staggering step backward, eyes very wide. “What, was that a test, too?”

“Of a kind, perhaps.” The hand that appeared little more than bone and tendon rose, and she twisted one slender strand of one hair about the ash-coloured phalange, thoughtful and considering. “You are aiding him in his quest, after all. For all I feel you have no designs upon the blade yourself, I had to be sure.”

As much as she could not believe anyone she had known to have passed through this hall, she still had to whisper her question. “How did you know about my father?”

“I am queen of the dead.” With the simple proclamation burning against her thoughts, Hela turned again to Thor. “Odinson. I have not the item you seek.” She paused, and then with no obvious regret nor remorse: “I have bargained it to another.”

“ _What_? Why put us through that—”

“You must learn to listen, Jane Foster,” she said, sharp, though she never once looked away from Thor. “Who might I have bargained it to, Son of Odin?”

He drew a sharp breath, then let it out again on a ragged sigh. “Loki.”

The nod of her head rustled the golden curls, the wisps of white and yellowing grey. “Loki.”

The world gave a little lurch under her feet. “Oh my god,” she whispered, though Hela and Thor had focused again entirely upon one another.

“It is also not Sullt alone that you seek.” This time Hela spoke in a manner very nearly gentle, and her good hand picked strangely at the lace of her gown’s hem. “The knife will sever a soul’s connection, but it must be caught if it is not to be lost by those who have called it free.”

Jane had the sudden insane image of a giant butterfly net, Loki struggling within it. “Caught with what?” she asked, and Hela gave her a curious look.

“A bowl, by the name of Hungr.” Her voice held clear warning now, when she turned it again upon Thor. “Both knife and bowl devour souls, if not carefully wielded. It is only worse when one is without the other.”

“And did Loki have both?”

Whatever else he had possessed, Jane knew of the dreadful hunger in him. She’d seen something of it when he’d been released from the prison beneath the palace, in the way he’d so often stared at Thor as if he might swallow him whole. That observation had never been helped by the latter way Thor had described him to her from what he had seen in SHIELD’s surveillance of his arrival on Midgard: lean. Starving. At the nod Hela gave him, Thor could not disguise the relief in his eyes. “He had both, yes.”

Though Thor seemed content to let this lie for a moment, so that he might consider it for himself, Jane couldn’t help the question that spilled from her mind to her lips and beyond. “But if Loki had a knife that split souls, what was he planning to do with it?”

Hela sat very still upon her stair. “It was not my place to ask.”

“What, you just gave the sorcerer son of a god-king a magic knife and figured that was cool?”

The pitying look Hela gave her had never made Jane feel so small. “His bargain was to my liking. I required no further information, as long as he observed the basic rules.”

But her mind was that of a scientist; she wanted to ask what those rules were. But Thor’s low urgency overrode her like riders on a fierce storm, demanding and verging on the desperate.

“What bargain did my brother make with you for these items?”

“It is not my place to tell you such things,” she repeated with that same patient ennui bordering on disdain, and Jane just could not help herself. It seemed her fear would always manifest as her mouth running away with her good sense.

“Then what _is_ your place?”

“To rule over the realm of the unquiet dead.” When she smiled, the left side of her face leered like a gargoyle over its latest kill. “What is yours, Jane Foster?”

In that silence that followed, she wondered how she had ever managed to say a word before this peculiar creature of life and death and everything that lay between two such extremes. But Hela would not let it lie.

“You have no answer?”

When she spoke, her voice felt heavy as lead. “To ask questions, I guess.”

“And what of the answers you find?”

“I may not ever find them.” And she gave a faint little laugh, troubled and half-confused. “But then it’s the journey that teaches, not its end, right?”

From the faint smile she earned, Jane figured that Hela found something to like in that. But then she was turning to Thor again, her expression very grave even as she leaned closer to him, a sunflower seeking the path of a golden blaze. “Son of Odin.”

“Yes?”

“You may use the knife and bowl as reward for finding it. But return them to me, when you are done.”

His broad brow furrowed with surprised doubt. “That is all you ask?”

“It is.”

It seemed he might protest, but then he bowed his head before her one more time. “I thank you.”

That odd smile came again, as old as it was so very terribly young. “Thor,” she whispered, and the name seemed unnatural upon her tongue. “You do not know how to use it, do you?”

“I do not.”

Her pity laced through her amusement like day melting into dusk. “And you did not even think to ask me?”

It was not confidence that drove him here, Jane thought; rather it was a disturbing and desperate kind of desire, one that ought to have terrified anyone at its heart.

_But then, did he ever even realise how deep his brother’s love for him ran?_

“I thought it would be will that moves such an object,” Thor said, soft, and she shrugged.

“A will such as yours, perhaps. But let me give you some advice.” One hand still played with the hem of her little-girl dress, though her swinging feet had come to an abrupt halt. “Have you anything that belongs to your brother, still?”

“Yes.”

Hela nodded, her features impossibly solemn for one who looked so very young. “Have it on you, when you wield the knife, cradle the bowl.” Something flickered in the one eye she had, an unspoken spell. “It will make things considerably easier.”

“I thank you for your guidance.”

“Do not be so quick to offer your gratitude,” she said sharply, but her ruined face still softened when he placed a gentle kiss upon the bone of her left hand. “Safe travels, Son of Odin. Dr. Jane Foster.”

They passed through the veil together, Thor holding it up so she might duck beneath it. The woman from earlier did not make a reappearance though given it did not appear to disturb Thor, Jane made no mention of it. Indeed he just remained very quiet, and she tried to ignore the way the silence told her that their footsteps did not echo in these halls.

“I’m not sure that went that well,” she said finally, unable to bear it a moment longer. He only sighed, hand twitching at the place where Mjölnir ought to have hung at his side.

“It seems every time one question is answered, another arises.”

Without truly thinking of why, Jane reached over, took his hand. Though she was no Mjölnir, she could only hope her presence would be enough until they retrieved her again. “So what do we do?”

Thor took her hand willingly, though it felt cold in hers. “I am not sure.”

“I guess it’s back home for now.”

“Yes.”

The defeat in that one word sat so utterly at odds with everything that she had known of him that Jane yanked her hand free, pulled around in front of him. He looked at her, startled and uncertain, and she decided abruptly that she _hated_ that look. Rising up on her toes, she pushed her hands over his cheeks and forced him down to her level, voice fierce and furious.

“Are you giving up?”

“No. _No_ , I am simply…” He closed his eyes, pressed his forehead to hers. “…I am tired, Jane.”

“I know.” And she sighed, drawing away. “God, I know.” Holding even tighter to the strap of her satchel, she steered them towards what she hoped was the exit from a dead god-girl’s hall. “Let’s just go home. Cheap beer and a stupid movie, that’s what we need right now.”

 

*****

 

They did not get either, as it turned out. When they eventually trudged together into the flat, it was only to find Darcy standing in the front room with her arms folded over her chest. Ian lurked beside her, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

“Where’ve you two been?” she demanded, voice ringing like a clarion bell; Jane winced, even as Thor looked nothing if not absolutely confused. “Apparently there was a massive thunderstorm, like totally localised over Highgate Cemetery. What the _hell_ have you two been doing? That wasn’t the Bifröst, and you haven’t been answering your phone!”

In truth Jane didn’t even know where her phone was. Even with the unexpectedly good roaming service she’d caught on Svartálfaheimr that one time, she didn’t expect Orange to have extended their coverage as far as the hall of the draugar queen. “Look, Darcy, I’m kind of tired, all right?” Even as Darcy’s mouth opened on a complaint she waved a hand, half-turned for the stairs. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

Moving with a speed that seemed frankly obscene in heels of that height, Darcy blocked her escape. “No. Nuh-uh. No way. What have you been _doing_?”

Had she not been so tired and heartsick she might have said nothing at all. “Look, we went to the land of the dead to ask the queen a favour, all right? _Now_ can I go get a cup of tea and a nap?”

Jane angled herself so that she could go for the kitchen instead, but Darcy’s hand about her upper arm bit like a vice grip. “Wait. Wait. What.” Jane tried to yank her arm free, but Darcy just clamped down harder. “You went to _the land of the dead_ and you didn’t take us?”

“You know, I’m kind of glad we didn’t go, myself.”

“Shut up, Ian,” Darcy snapped, and when he stared at her with something between hurt and incredulousness, she bundled up her lips into an air kiss. “Love you.”

“…maybe I should go put the kettle on,” he said, already beating a hasty retreat. Darcy threw her hands into the air, almost knocking her own glasses to the floor.

“Is there _any_ problem in England that isn’t solved by a cup of tea and a sit down?”

“If there is, then I don’t want to know about it,” Ian called back, already with kettle in hand. Thor himself still wore that look of bemusement at the entire situation even as Darcy’s mouth twisted into a half-scowl.

“And get us some cookies!”

“ _Biscuits_!”

“I don’t care, as long as they’re full of sugar, dammit!” Still with her hand about Jane’s arm, she began to drag her into the living room. “I swear, it’s like he’s speaking an alien language some days,” she muttered, and Thor shook his own head.

“I can understand this feeling.”

“I bet you can.” Flumphing down onto the couch, pulling Jane down with her, she reached for him too. “So what do you call them on Asgard, anyway? Biscuits or cookies? Say cookies. Cookies are good. But no, wait, you guys totally didn’t take us on _another_ field trip and that kind of sucks. We’re supposed to be friends!”

Thor’s own descent had a fair more controlled grace to it, for all he looked utterly out of place on the couch in full armour with his cloak still about his shoulders. At least he’d been given chance enough to put Mjölnir up on the coathook, as was his habit. “It was not a journey for pleasure, Darcy. We had business there.”

“I bet you did – no, wait. _Wait_.” Darcy’s expression had gone from mildly pissed to wildly disapproving in the space of a nanosecond, and Jane’s stomach turned an uncomfortable somersault at the look in her eyes. “So, you two went to the land. Of. The. _Dead_. Holy shit, tell me you did _not_.”

“We spoke to the queen. Hela.” He spoke very evenly, but Jane could see the faint twitch on his right hand upon his knee. “There is an artefact I wish to locate, and Jane has been gracious enough to lend me her skills so I might do so.”

“By building a portal to the land of the dead.” Darcy threw herself back into the couch, and when she slammed her feet down onto the coffee table a pile of textbooks hit the carpet with an unholy crash. “Why do I get the impression you’re doing this because your Dad wouldn’t approve so you can’t use his big fancy rainbow road instead?”

“Niflheimr is not generally a place open to Asgardians.”

The snort Darcy gave seemed to say she knew exactly why that might be. “This is about Loki, isn’t it.” But before Thor could answer she turned her accusing eyes on her friend, wide and furious. “Jane.”

“Darcy, this isn’t your business.”

Her mouth opened with wide indignation. “Sure it is! If my friend’s getting involved in what, some sort of rescue mission of the crazy-ass lunatic who tried to, I don’t know, _blow up Midtown_ , then excuse me for just—”

“I know not how to call the dead back to living form, Darcy.” As quiet as his interruption was, Thor’s tone brooked no argument. “Few do. Even Hela herself would struggle, without the body to return the spirit to. But it is not what I seek.”

Somewhere behind that fury Jane knew she could see genuine fear. “Then what are you _doing_?”

Thor seemed to be able to sense the same; his own reply held more weariness than frustration. “My brother and I parted on…poor terms. Better than they had been, perhaps, but I cannot rest without speaking to him one final time.”

“Yeah, we all _think_ we’d want that,” Darcy replied, low and harsh. “But do we really?”

Her own mouth had dropped open, and Jane could only stare at her even as Darcy’s attention did not waver from Thor. And yet Jane herself was only remembering the urn. And the long plane ride. And the taste of ashes in her mouth, mixed with the salt dried on her skin. The flight attendant had stopped offering her food and drink after the first half hour. Jane still didn’t remember how long the journey had even taken.

“Darcy.” Her voice felt as jagged as broken glass against her dry throat. “This is Thor’s choice.”

The hurt in her eyes burned. “And yours, too,” she said, and then her smile turned ragged and strange. “But hey, look, now you’re playing with portals. Kind of makes it all worth it, right?”

That hurt, and badly. “That’s not how it is.”

Whatever odd fury had overtaken Darcy seemed to dissipate like so much smoke then. She shook her head, sank back into the couch. “Yeah. I know. I just…I’m sorry.” She rubbed her fingers up under her glasses, and then glanced between the two of them with rapidly blinking eyes. “I know it’s none of my business, but…the land of the _dead_ , Jane.”

“Niflheimr is not the resting place of the lesser spirits,” Thor said, oddly gentle. “It is but the gateway to Helheimr, which no living person can pass through. The same is true of the great gates of Valhalla.”

Darcy frowned, but Jane could hear something grateful in her tone. “So you’re not actually messing around with dead people, then?”

“We are trying to locate an artefact belonging to my brother that would allow us to temporarily part the veil between the living and the dead. Not to cross over – only to speak.”

For a moment she let that sink in. Then she nodded. “Ah. Skype for the recently bereaved. I get it.”

“I just don’t know how we’re going to find it,” Jane muttered, smoothing her hands out over her jeans. “I mean, I’m a scientist, and I built the portals, sure, but this…it’s beyond me. And for Heimdall can see, I’m sure that Loki made sure he never saw any of this.”

“This would be very true,” Thor said with glum conviction, and Jane’s mouth twisted with the turn of her thoughts.

“And who else could we trust? Because the only sorcerers you trusted, they’re both – oh, _shit_.”

At the horrified look she gave him, Thor just shook his head. “It is fine, Jane.”

But she had buried her head in her hands, groaning in such a way that if she hadn’t known otherwise, she’d have thought she was dying. “I’m such an idiot.”

His palm rested light between her shoulderblades, his voice just as soft. “But it is true.” And then she could all but hear him shaking his head. “Almost.”

Glancing up, she took a deep breath, lips pressed so hard together it hurt. “We can’t ask your dad.”

“No,” he agreed, and did not skip a beat. “But we might speak with Angrboða again.”

“What?” Then her common sense kicked in, hard and unrelenting. “No. No way.”

“She already knows we seek the knife. And there is no one in Asgard who would trust her word after her banishment. The Allfather declared her _nithing_. It is a crime to even speak with her.”

Even as Darcy followed this conversation with wide eyes, Jane could not help her explosion. “You could have told me this _before_ we dropped by for tea and scones!”

“Being that you are not Asgardian, such decrees do not apply to you.” He had meant it to be comforting; instead Jane felt only cold, even as Thor shook his head with a bleakness she wished she had never known in him. “And I imagine Loki believed they did not apply to him, even before he realised his bloodline.”

Pushing all other thought aside for the moment, she frowned over the implications of his words. “Then you think he still spoke to her after she was banished?”

“Before, I might have said no.” Thor looked nothing if not deeply unhappy. “Loki always had a curiosity beyond sense, but even the Allfather did not believe he could slip through the realms the way he did, beneath the sight of Heimdall.”

Loki had ruined Thor’s coronation by letting Jötnar warriors into Asgard. After that, he had then brought their king to Asgard in order to murder one father at the bedside of another. It seemed only logical that he must have walked its bleak landscapes long before he had done either of those things.

“She is our best hope,” he said, soft, and Jane shook her head.

“ _Your_ best hope.”

His voice turned flat. “You do not wish to accompany me.”

Her heart plummeted to roughly the level of the Antipodes. “I…oh, shit.” When she wound her hands about his, she found them to be as cold as her own. Still she clenched tight, looked into the shuttered blue of his. “Thor. No. I’ll help you. I just…hasn’t this gone far enough?”

His answer broke upon the simplicity of its truth. “No.”

“Can I come?”

Their voices chorused together, complimentary and well-matched. “ _No!_ ” Then Jane looked back to only him, wincing. “Look, Thor, I just…okay. Fine. I’ll calibrate the portals, we’ll charge her up, and…we’ll go see the witch.”

“Wait, you’re going to see a _witch_ now and I’m still not invited?”

Jane did not take her eyes from Thor. “I’ll get you and Ian tickets to _Wicked_ ,” she said. “But first, I’ve got some work to do.”

Darcy’s doubt had all the weight of the world about it. “Jane—”

“I don’t think it’ll take long. Heimdall left a pretty good map. Too bad he doesn’t voice it, too. If he was my GPS then I’d never get out of my car.” And she squeezed his hands tighter still. “It’s okay, Thor. Work’s good for me when I’m stressed. Calms me down.”

“I am sorry.”

But the hope in his eyes said otherwise. “I know you are.” Then she forced a laugh, gave a quick glance back to the oddly silent kitchen. “Maybe Ian will do some training with you.”

At last his face brightened. “Yes! Perhaps we could move on to practice swords; he is progressing well, for a mortal with no prior training.”

“Really?”

Despite her friend’s doubt, Darcy seemed to have none whatsoever. “That’s my boy,” she said with approval. “I’m coming to watch, by the way. That means: shirts off.”

Ian did bring them the promised tea and biscuits in the end, along with some very strong coffee, though Jane soon enough drifted back to her room and to her equations. The coffee, by the time she got to it, had turned cold and bitter. Jane drank it down all the same. She would need the energy before her job was done.


	6. 1.6: Entropy

He came to breakfast just as she was dithering over whether or not to have a second crumpet – and one slathered with golden syrup and butter, at that. As soon as his eyes lit upon the half empty packet his entire face filled with joy, and she surrendered all four of them to him. She had a piece of toast thickly coated in marmalade instead. She was idly cutting it into tiny soldiers when he looked up from his third crumpet, expression sudden and guarded.

“I thought I might return to Asgard.”

She paused, and then continued slicing the bread even thinner yet. “Ah.”

Her hand stilled only when he reached across the table, laid his fingers over hers. Glancing up, she found herself all but arrested by the pale blue of his eyes. “By no means is this a permanent return. I simply wish to check Loki’s former chambers, to see if there is anything left that might give me some clue as to where he might have stored Sullt and Hungr.”

“I see.” Gently drawing her hand back, she began to push the strips of bread into a small pile with the end of the knife, then set it carefully to one side before standing. “Well, I’ll keep working on calibrating the portal for Jötunheimr, I guess. It shouldn’t be too hard, what with the directions Heimdall wrote down.”

“You do not wish to accompany me?”

She paused in a half-turn towards the sink, unable to decide if her heart had fallen or not. “But will your friends not think it’s weird, me following you around like a puppy all the time?”

He’d forgotten the last crumpet, rising from the chair to cross to her side in three long strides. “I am certain that this is not how they view you, Jane,” he said, and his great palm seemed to cup half of her face entire. Beneath his entreating gaze, she was unable to comprehend how Frigga had ever learned to say no to anything her eldest son had asked of her.

“Yeah, well.” She was leaning into his touch and she knew it. “I _would_ like to come.”

With a gentle incline forward, he pressed his lips to hers, then drew back with a grin. “Then we shall call to Heimdall later this morning.”

Returning to the sink, Jane grimaced down at the ragged jeans and old t-shirt she’d slopped on approximately ten seconds after having rolled out of bed. “I should probably change before we go anywhere.”

“To me, you are perfect the way you are.”

“That’s some nice sweet talk you got there, buddy,” she said with a wry grin, reaching for the dishwashing liquid. Giving it a violent squirt, she flicked the tap on and began to rinse the plate under the spray. “But honestly, I feel like I need a skirt with at least fifty yards of fabric to it before I’ll even be let in the front door.”

In the end she chose a simple sheath dress and low court shoes. Neither had very much in common with what little she’d seen of the current fashions of Asgard, but as she shouldered her satchel with its clinking collection of buttons and badges, she decided she pretty much didn’t care.

Given this was as close to an “official” visit as they got these days, they did not need to use her portals. Instead they went out onto the balcony, and she held onto him tight when he turned his face to the skies and called to the gatekeeper. Within moments they were walking together from the gateway, Thor already giving the other warrior a nod.

“Heimdall.”

“Thor. Jane Foster.” When he stepped down from his dais, he did so in a manner surprisingly light-footed for a person of his sheer size. “And how have your journeys been since last we met?”

“Enlightening.” Something much deeper seemed to pass between the two where their eyes met, though Thor only gave him a sombre nod. “But there is something I should like to retrieve before I do anything more.”

“Then go with your heart, and let it go with you in return.”

The poetry of those words seemed interesting, coming as they did from that stolid man. But he offered nothing more, and Jane held her own silence tight against her chest as they walked out onto the song of the rainbow bridge.

His arm came warm about her waist, fingers pressing lightly into her side. “Are you sure you do not wish to fly?” he murmured into her ear. Jane looked up to the sky. Night had fallen over Asgard, and the stars turned above her like a kaleidoscope.

“Oh, what the hell,” she said, reckless. “Let’s do it.”

It would never be something she ever got used to, that she knew – not the impossibility of a hammer granting flight, nor the warmth of his body against hers, nor the wind in her hair as she soared through alien skies, her hand trailing over supernovae and galaxies alike, the city below a fairytale made flesh while she floated far above like a dreamer just waiting to fall into its willing embrace.

They made their landing upon one of the many balconies. It soon proved to lead into Thor’s outer chambers. They were all she had seen of his personal part of the palace; she’d never been as far in as whatever passed for his actual bedroom. She did not know if that disturbed her or not. The affection between them remained as easy as it had always been, punctuated with light kisses and the warmth of his arms around her. Somehow that made it easier to bear Darcy’s pointed and curious comments about how it must feel to tap a god.

And yet any thought of what it might be, to be taken to his bed, warred with the unease of her memory of the graveyard. Even that storm had been a passion yet mostly unreleased. Jane still had no way of knowing how it would feel, to stand at the centre of that sort of power when it was given free reign. Though she had never been the type to be afraid, there was something inside of him that went beyond her own ability to experience. She did not doubt she was curious to find out. But then curiosity was not always kind to those who chose to indulge without first considering the consequences.

His fingers curled about hers, his voice turned as soft and strange as the air before a storm. “Come this way.”

She could see something very tight about his eyes. It didn’t surprise her; given the state of their relationship, she doubted he’d spent much time at all in his brother’s chambers after either his death or his subsequent imprisonment. She tightened her own grip, and nodded.

“Let’s go.”

They walked only a short distance down the gentle curve of the hallway. A set of great doors awaited them. Made of some dark wood, they had been polished to a high sheen and carved with intricate scenes of mythical creatures – who may not have been mere legends to those such as the Asgardians – with the motif of a spreading ash tree at its centre. Its detail and clarity reminded of her of Rodin’s bronze work _La Porte de l'Enfer_ , for all there was no air of death or despair to this work. Rather it seemed so utterly alive that she was very nearly taken aback, afraid to touch as if by doing so the doors would come to life beneath her fingertips.

Thor’s own hands lingered over the only colour to the doors, that of its silver handles and the ornate lock that spanned the distance between them. From an unseen pocket he produced two small keys. As she watched in silence he twisted them in an odd pattern, and after a series of nearly musical clicks then the doors swung inward, apparently with no push from his own hands.

“He had wards.” The words made her jump, low and unexpected as they were. “There would never be much finesse required to get beyond these doors, but those unwelcome would quickly rue the moment they decided to try.”

The thickness of the wood and the puzzling nature of the lock said otherwise to her, but then she had not the strength of even an Asgardian child. Instead she said no more as they walked together into the darkness. It prickled over and under her skin, but before she could protest Thor gave a faint murmur. The sconces upon the walls sprung to sudden life, and she blinked up at him in the gentle light with considerable surprise.

“Just a trick.” He wore the faintest of smiles, and would say no more. Jane turned her head instead to stare about the room, seeing that its darkness came from the fact its windows had all been hung with thick sheets. Her eyes went very wide, and then clenched tightly shut as her body was wracked with first one, then two, then three ridiculous sneezes. Thor gave a faint chuckle, steadying her with one hand.

“I do not believe anyone has entered these chambers in quite some time.”

Dust lay in thick shrouds over what few surfaces remained and when Thor crossed the floor, he left a trail of even footsteps in his wake. Jane blinked, and then moved quickly to follow. She did not want to be left alone in this room.

Everything about the chambers had a hollowed-out feeling, as if they had been scraped clean of what had once been within. Though not entirely empty in a physical sense, Jane could catch no intuition of the person she had known but briefly. Even then the force of his personality had struck her like a tsunami. Sometimes she figured that had been one of the reasons why had slapped him. As much as she had hated his actions, some part of her had just demanded to know if such a vital and conniving presence could even be _real_.

In a strange way she could understand why Thor so struggled to accept that a person like that could die and not attempt to speak one last time, no matter what she might have herself believed about life after death.

Thor had stopped near a fireplace, one that seemed large enough to spitroast a fully grown bull African buffalo. With one hand upon its empty mantel, he appeared to be bracing his weight against it. “I believe I told you before that his belongings were taken and stored away, after he was incarcerated.” His eyes had fixed upon the shelf, as if looking at something that was no longer there. “Had there been anything of note, even shielded and warded, I do not doubt my mother would have noticed.”

“Are you sure?”

He shook his head, though Jane did not think it meant what she thought it did. “Mother taught Loki the art of seiðr, and she was a mighty seiðkona indeed.” Pushing himself upright once more, he turned away from the fireplace. “Their paths diverged, and in some respects I assume he went far beyond her knowledge, but in others he would always be her pupil. I believe she would have known.”

It felt wrong to ask it, both here and now, but the question would not leave her. “So then why are we here?”

“I am not sure.”

She did not think he lied to her. Despite his size and his strength, he looked little more than a small child where he stood, lost and alone in the echoing vacuum of what had once been his younger brother’s chambers. Jane had no idea what the room had looked like before its emptying, but had the feeling it had been very different indeed. The scope of his loss seemed suddenly very real to her now, heavy and unwelcome, a coffin lid opened only to discover the fingernail grooves carved into its inside surface.

She laid a hand gentle upon his forearm. “Do you need to be alone?”

“No. No, I would rather not be alone.” When he shook his head now, it was as if he attempted to awaken himself from an unpleasant dreaming. “Let us look further.”

He pushed open a door which led to a new room. It was a bedchamber. The realisation left her deeply uncomfortable, even before she noticed the faded and pale quality of Thor’s expression. A large bed remained at its northern end, naked of mattress and linens. The high posts reached nearly to the ceiling but no canopy hung between them. They appeared to be made of the same fine wood as the door had been, carved in a motif of wolf and snake and raven and horse. One creature stood to each point, reminded her oddly of a movie she’d seen back in high school: four teenaged girls playing at magic, calling their corners and the guardians of north, east, south, and west.

The walls bore no tapestries or paintings, the shelves as empty as the numerous bookcases. Again, as in the outer chambers, no other furniture remained aside from that great bed. “They burned his desk,” Thor murmured, eyes drifting to an open doorway somewhat to the left of another great marbled hearth. It might have been a study once, for all she could see of it from her own vantage point. But for all Jane had never known Thor to display fear, she could see in him no desire to enter that darkness.

He made an abrupt turn, and she had to scramble to keep up with him. He’d moved to another doorway, this one closed and locked. It still opened easily enough beneath his great hands, and he disappeared inside. Jane paused a moment, and then followed.

She found herself first in a small antechamber, one with recessed shelves and a basin. When she passed through she found the second door opened into a great circular room. A bath took pride of place at its centre, and set into the walls nearby she could see two narrow cubicles with high spigots from which water might pour down. Other small doors were set into the walls, and she supposed those were the actual facilities. In that, at least, the much larger chamber seemed similar enough to the small bathroom attached to her own guest room. Still, her attention lingered over a much larger door on the chamber’s opposite side, one as ornate as the one they had entered through.

“Where does that go?”

Thor scarcely glanced her way. “To my chambers.”

“I…oh.”

What crossed his face then was a strange smile, one both longing and sad. “Perhaps it seems odd, that we should share our private spaces in any way, but…” Passing a hand back through his hair, Thor’s expression again turned very lost. “…we always had the same chambers as children. The joined bathchambers were the only way our mother could convince us to separate.”

“You really liked sharing with your little brother that much?”

“I did.” Though he laughed, any humour the sound might have had was long since lost to the memories it invoked. “He was always the more private one, but when I was deemed old enough to have my own chambers, he was still young enough to not be so concerned of such matters.” One hand came to rest upon the edge of the great empty bath, set high upon a dais and recessed into its polished marble sides. It was large enough to hold at least six people, more if they wanted to be particularly friendly. “I always waited for the day he would say that he wished to move to another part of the palace. But he never did.”

The oddity of it bit at the back of her mind if she tried to think of Thor and Loki in this room, together or alone. Her skin held an uncomfortable tightness despite the relative cool of the chambers, the faint glow of the sconces casting long shadows through the empty bath. The golden spigots, shaped like serpents, seemed to writhe in the dim light, their eyes sharp and knowing upon her. She turned her back, arms crossed firmly over her chest, and wondered why she suddenly wanted to cry.

“I don’t think there’s anything to find in here, Thor.”

His fingers lingered over the marble, speckled and smooth as a robin’s egg. “No. Possibly not.” And he sighed, eyes held tightly shut. “I just…thank you.”

Startled, Jane could not move from where her feet held her all but prisoner. “What?”

“I could not have done this alone.”

Hot shame moved through her like a lahar, thick and burning. It felt too much indeed, to be the only person he had left – considering she could not imagine his father doing this for him while his mother lay dead, and his friends likely held little enough sympathy towards a man who had attempted to kill both him and them.

“It’s okay,” she said, hoarse and raw, and he did not look at her. His head hung low as he crossed the tiled floor before her, his face worn like the shadows that dogged his heels as the lights began to go out one by one.

“Come. We should lock up his rooms, and go back.”

She didn’t quite know where he meant – to his own rooms, perhaps, or as far as her mother’s flat in Midgard. Whatever destination he had in mind he did not get much further than the very next room. The unhappy look he cast at the stripped bed stopped him dead, and he held that stillness for as long as it took her to reach the doorway to the outer chambers. With one hand upon the doorknob, she could scarcely find voice enough with which to call back to him.

“Thor?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to…go into the next room. For a bit. You just…” Though she reached out a hand too him, she was quite unable to touch his hunched back. “Take as much time as you need, okay?”

“Thank you.”

The curtains over the windows, too simple and too thick to be those original to the room, called her. She opened them with scarcely a thought, finding that the windows beyond were in fact floor to ceiling doors in latticed iron and glass, opening onto a balcony beyond the arching windows. They were locked, but it did not matter. She could see through them the lovely view of the city below, and the glittering sea that stretched for the horizon until it finally fell into the sky.

“What do you suppose he is searching for?”

She barely stifled a shriek, whirling around to find the Allfather standing before her, hands held before his hips and one eyebrow arched high.

“I…your majesty.”

He snorted at her nervousness, came closer. “It is no crime for him to come here. What possessions Loki retained have all been removed.” Glancing up at the window, he said in a toneless voice: “It is but memories that remain, and those are Thor’s to keep or discard as he wishes.”

Jane dug her nails into her palms “He…he hasn’t been in here in a long time. I think maybe he just didn’t want to do it alone.”

“And you are his constant companion in these days, it seems.”

Something about that stung. “He asked for my company.”

“And so easily you give it,” he said, and his eye was searching upon her. “But what is it you seek in return, Jane Foster? Knowledge? Pleasure? A life extended beyond what is right and proper for one of your kind?”

A burning flush crept up her cheeks, and with it came the memory of the legend of the apples as Angrboða had told her, and the anger she had felt at the realisation there might have been a way. And yet Thor had been too involved in speaking again to his dead brother to consider how he might keep Jane longer.

And yet she had never thought to ask for such. She’d never even thought enough to want more than what she had. The refrain of an old song moved through her mind, and she gave a faint smile. Her father had always been a fan of Brian May. He had even consulted with him a time or two over some matter of the skies and stars.

_Who wants to live forever…?_

“Loki is gone from this place,” Odin said, soft though without discernible emotion. Jane could only nod, hands cupped tight over her elbows.

“I guess so,” she muttered, and kept her eyes upon the great arched window before them. As her eyes skipped over it, her thoughts gave a sudden jolt. The lattice of metal had been worked into the pattern of a great tree, and in Asgard there could be but one motif for such a construction. Odin’s age-ruined hand moved over the greatest branches of the spreading ash, surprisingly lithe for all she could see the swelling of the joints.

“But it is not so easy to erase one from all the realms,” he murmured, and gave her a sideways look. “He left himself in many places, that I do not doubt.” Then he blinked. “And it always called to him.”

“What did?” she asked, heart sinking as she heard the answer even before Odin spoke it.

“Blood, of course.”

In the days after the attack on New York, Jane had often seen Loki upon a television or computer screen. That face, which might have been attractive under other circumstances, had always been twisted in deranged laughter or bitter madness. And what always had followed had been the scarlet-stained streets of Manhattan, the carnage wrought in the name of a child’s revenge.

And then she looked to Odin again and her heart stopped dead. He wore a sly smile, strange and secretive. It wrought in her a strong need to step back. She had told Thor once that his father scared her, but it was not correct. The truth came closer to the fact he _intimidated_ her, with his age and his power and his knowledge. But with that smile, she felt real and very sudden fear.

“Father.” Thor’s voice was colourless, flat; Jane glanced over, relief crashing over her like a tidal wave. And yet when she looked back to Odin, she grew only more confused. The smirk had gone. In its absence, doubt covered her like a shroud: she could not believe it anything but the over reaction of an imagination taxed by the impossible.

_But then, everything seems little more than improbable these days._

“You return home once more, and yet have not come to see me,” Odin said, mild; Thor only nodded.

“I had not intended it to be a lengthy visit.”

“I had not hoped it so, with your companion with you.” Jane bit back a harsh retort, but he did not even appear to notice her discomfort, stepping closer to his son. “Yet it cannot continue on this way. The people, they see the light of the Bifröst come and go, and know it for the journeys of their golden prince. And yet it is no balm to their uncertain hearts. They see only the unease of a troubled warrior, seeking out some battle they do not understand.” Standing before his son, Jane could see that he was somewhat the shorter – and yet his mere presence made him seem as if a giant. “You must make your choice and abide by it, or lose their respect – if never their love.”

Thor stood still. “I see.”

“I tell you only for your own good.” And now he glanced back to her, cool and calculating. “And your mortal, this is not her place.”

Jane spoke around a dry throat, and her voice did not tremble one bit. “I think that’s Thor’s choice.”

He snorted, low and oddly elegant. “It cannot be his choice alone. He is a prince. Do not pretend to understand what that means.”

Despite the silence that followed, Jane could feel the low crackle of electricity in the air. It was Odin who spoke again, the silence heavier than she had ever known it could be.

“Will you join us for dinner?”

Thor’s expression remained tight and unmoving. “I believe we will be leaving shortly.”

“As you would.” He reached forward, his palm opened wide. “Be well, my son.”

The oddest look passed between them, and for a moment Jane feared that he would reject his father’s offer. Then, they clasped hands over forearms, Thor bowing his head.

“I thank you for your blessings, Father.”

Despite the ironic tilt to the words Odin did not call his son out on his tone. Instead the Allfather swept from the room, and in his absence it abruptly seemed a thousand times easier to breathe. And yet Jane could not help but glance back to the window, to where she had seen that smile, the one that had seemed to belong to another face, and one that had never been his own.

Without a thought her eyes moved to where his hand had rested. The diagrams drawn by Heimdall danced just beneath the surface of her thoughts, but she hardly needed to consider them. She had been looking at the exact place the Allfather’s hand had rested for at least a day already.

“Jötunheimr,” she whispered.

Thor did not hear her; from the distance in his eyes, he had gone somewhere very far away from her. “It may have been a mistake, to come here,” he said, soft, and her own voice rang very true in the still air.

“I don’t think so.”

“He is gone.” The sigh that escaped him seemed to be empty, hopeless. “I feel him not here either, and perhaps it is only because I am not meant to.”

When Jane closed her eyes she could see nothing else but those gnarled and aged fingers, lingering upon the branch that held a world of ice and snow. The cunning smile played across features too small to hold it true, and the roiling in her gut forced her eyes open once more.

“No.”

Thor blinked over at her, her harsh tone like a blow. “What?”

“We go to Jötunheimr.” His eyes widened. Her voice hardened. “We speak to Angrboða.”

He still began to shake his head. “Jane, I will not force you into any further danger for my own fancies and foolishness—”

“You’re not _forcing_ me into anything. I don’t think you could.” But she still forced her own smile. “We should go. And we will.”

At first there could be only silence. Then he let out a long breath, slow and almost shy. “Thank you.”

Her arms came about him. “Hey. What are friends for?”

But there was one last thing to do on Asgard. They returned to his chambers, this time through the external door rather than the internal one that joined to his brother’s rooms via the great bathchamber. They entered his actual room, and Jane’s eyes could not help but shift to the great bed at its centre, piled high with furs and red woven silk and thick wool. She could not help the furtive little voice that whispered in her head about what it would be like, to be laid down amongst that warmth and heat and taken to yet more places she could not but imagine. Yet Thor was distracted, paying scarcely any heed to anything but a chest in the corner.

He found what he wanted at the very bottom, wrapped in silks and cradled in velvet. When he held them before her, she could only breathe by force.

“Loki’s daggers.”

“Yes.” Reverent, he bowed his head over them, and smiled. “Now we can go.”

 

*****

 

It couldn’t be that easy; they had to return to Earth, first. Fortunately they’d never bothered to take back to Asgard any of the gear they’d used on their last trip to Jötunheimr, though Jane did have to retrieve one of her fur coats from Darcy’s closet. Thor had offered to help, but after one look in the black hole that passed for her room he’d declared himself utterly defeated. He’d then retreated to his own room and she had to believe he’d fallen asleep. For herself there seemed no such luck. Sitting out on the balcony with a cup of tea, she pulled the coat about her shoulders and stared up at a tar-soup sky.

“Star-gazing sucks in London, you know.”

Jane took a brief sip of her tea. It never tasted as good as when Ian made it. She supposed it was because she was only technically a half-blood. “I know.”

Though her tone hadn’t been exactly forbidding Darcy still threw herself down at her side with blithe unawareness, wrapped in what must have been Ian’s dressing gown. “Your Mom called, by the way.”

“She still in Paris?”

“Munich, apparently.” Giving a little shrug, Jane let it be at that; her mother’s exploits were of no particular interest to her unless she was planning to come back to London. Explaining away the god of thunder in her spare room would not be a particularly pleasant conversation, but then her mother was unlikely enough to turn up back in London as long as her daughter was still about.

Darcy, however, didn’t seem to think the conversation was done. Digging a Mars bar out of one of the pockets of the dressing gown, she began to unwrap it. “She finally heard about Greenwich, looks like.”

Her fingers tightened about the cup. “I thought SHIELD and the Metropolitan Police tried to keep names out of it.”

“They did. She just wanted to know if you’d seen any of what went down.” Around a too-large bite of the bar, she said in a garble, “I just told her you were still away with the fairies at the time. Figured it was close enough.”

That made her snort. “Never thought you would have a problem with lying.”

“Yeah, but your Mom spots that shit from even seven hundred miles away,” she snorted, and extended her chocolate. “Want some?”

“No.” But she smiled wanly over the rim of her cup all the same. “Thanks.”

“Any time,” Darcy replied before concentrating on finishing the thing herself. Jane let her own attention wander sideways. While the cloud cover and light pollution certainly didn’t allow for any star gazing right now, she still found something calming about staring up at the sky of her own homeworld. Somewhere, faint in the distance, she thought she could hear one of the neighbours singing along to some old David Bowie song.

_Is there life on Mars…?_

“You off into space again?” Darcy asked, sudden, and Jane could only nod.

“For a bit.”

Waving one finger in her face, she admonished, “You be _careful_.”

Leaning back, Jane threw down the last of her tea and set the cup on the lip of the balcony’s edge. “Geez, Darcy, you sound like…well, not my Mom. But _someone’s_ mother, anyway.”

Instead of taking the expected offense, Darcy just snorted. “Good. Because she never will.”

There might have been more to say. Certainly Jane could feel things unsaid between them, hidden behind the clouds like the stars they still knew were there. Instead she just leaned against her shoulder, found both the scent of her freshly-washed hair and what must have been Ian’s preferred aftershave. She didn’t even realise when she’d fallen asleep until the dawn began to prick at her eyelids, a soft palm resting on her shoulder. When she opened them, it was to find Thor smiling down at them both, extending two cups of coffee.

“Good morning,” he said, and she could only smile back.

“I hope so.”

 

*****

 

It had been easier to calibrate the gear for Jötunheimr, especially as she already had already collected her own data on the Bifröst’s link to the location of the Járnvid. She barely even had the time to consider how many of her childhood fantasies had already come true. Instead she only noticed that the stretch between worlds felt no longer or shorter than it had between Earth and Niflheimr, and then she was sifting through her bag. Thor had already dropped the portal when she heard him take a sudden intake of breath. Her heart plummeted, body even more frozen than the subzero temperatures should had caused alone.

“Thor, what—”

He had gone down in a flurry of snow, a great roar rending what seemed the entire world in twain. Her hands tightened to claws as her heart leapt up in her throat. The memory of the monstrous hoar-wolves had already turned her blood to ice, and she wished she’d had time enough to take part in the lessons Thor had been giving Ian.

Then she actually _saw_ what had taken him, and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Mánagarm! Down, boy!”

“No. _No_.”

The beaming smile on his face still tore at her heart. It was happiest she’d seen him in days. “Jane, he came back!”

“You are _not_ keeping that thing.”

“I am not certain it is my choice,” he shouted back, but his elation told her that he hardly cared. Rolling over to plant his feet in the snow, he grasped the thick mandibles in his hands and actually rubbed his own face up against Mánagarm’s. “Good boy!”

“No. No!” And then it _licked_ him, a long stripe over his head that suggested it could have swallowed the whole thing quite easily had it felt so inclined. Thor just laughed even as Jane shouted: “Bad! Bad…giant…frost…thing!”

By now scritching it under the great jaw, Thor didn’t look over to her. When she just planted her hands on her hips and stared helplessly at the two of them, she could finally hear that the thing was all but _purring_. “Who’s a pretty boy, then?” Thor crooned, and Jane put her hands over her face.

“Oh my god.”

“Chin up, Lady Jane. It will make things easier.”

She dared a glance upward, noting that Thor had slung an arm over what passed for the creature’s neck as if they were the very best of friends. “In what way, exactly, is having a giant ice beast along for the trip to see a witch going to make it _easier_?”

His grin turned devilish. “We can ride him.”

“No way.”

And now it was pleading. “It will make it easier on you.”

That seemed horribly unfair, especially given she’d purposely said not a word about how much she was dreading the whole traipsing through the snow thing again. “It hasn’t even got a harness,” she said instead, and Thor wasn’t the least bit put off.

“It will not be necessary.” Patting the creature’s side, he gave it a grin that could be called little else but goofy. “We understand each other, do we not, Mánagarm?”

“You are absolutely insane.”

This only appeared to make him even more pleased. “I have been told this before.” Skirting about Mánagarm’s side, he patted just where she supposed its ribs would be and extended a hand. “Ladies first?”

Jane contemplated being thrown up there alone, or attempting to clamber up after him. “I don’t know what’s worse,” she said aloud, and Thor let loose one of those booming laughs that just rumbled with thunder and storm.

“Let me help you.”

In the end she went first, clinging onto the rough skin like a burr. The one thing she felt suddenly glad of was that she’d never considered even bringing a camera, let alone teaching Thor how to use one. She had never felt so glad to have his arms come about her when he vaulted up beside her, leaning forward to cradle her against the heat of his body.

“Hold on tight.”

“To _what_?” she moaned, but it was too late. They were all but dashing through the snow at a dizzying speed. Jane clenched her eyes tightly shut, thought of how much she’d always hated that particular Christmas carol. Fortunately the sheer speed of the thing meant it was not long at all before they reached their destination, though how Thor had communicated as much to Mánagarm, she would never know. She was suddenly very glad she’d never taken up any offer of horse riding with him. And then she started wondering why he couldn’t just fly her from the portal to Angrboða’s cave.

He gave her no chance to ask, as they had pulled up at their destination before she’d squirrelled away enough breath with which to speak again. Jane didn’t even wait for his assistance before sliding off, finding a fresh appreciation for snow as it came up solid beneath her palms and knees. When she eventually looked up she found Thor giving her a bemused look, Mánagarm hunkered down on its haunches with its tongue lolled out.

“Was that not an experience?”

“Yeah. An _experience_.” Rolling over onto her back, she thrust her arms out and sketched something like a snow angel. Laughter bubbled up in her chest, and she tossed her head back and forth. “Never a dull moment with you, is there.”

“I should hope not.” A hand extended with gallant invitation, hair glinting dull copper in the midnight-blue light of Jötunheimr’s unseen suns. “Come, Lady Jane, we have an appointment to keep.”

They clambered up over the cwm’s ridge again, on foot rather than by frost beast. She spared a glance back from the summit, but Mánagarm seemed happy enough to wait for them where Thor had dismounted. It in fact appeared to be drinking snow. Or perhaps crunching it the way she did ice cubes. With a shiver, Jane focused her attention back on the path before her, and began the awkward half-trek, half-slide down into the glacial valley below.

As they drew nearer to the icefall the cave loomed before them, the gash cut into the black rock just as she remembered it from before. Again a boyish figure emerged, lean even in her layered furs, lips curved in that knowing lazy smile Jane already felt to know altogether too well.

“So you come to me again, seeking advice.” Dancing her too-long fingers back over her ragged hair, Angrboða narrowed her eyes in the unkind way that sat so at odds with the welcome seduction of her smile. “You have not even rendered payment for our first exchange of information.”

Thor’s own stance held no such invitation to banter, hands firmly at his sides beneath the thick fur of his own cloak. In the dim light of Jötunheimr, the dark brown of it had turned nearly black. “What is it that you wish of me?”

Her tongue sketched a light path about her lips. “I have not yet decided.” Again she glided forward, the weight of her leaving no trail in the untouched snow as she drew too close to them both; Jane took half a step backwards, but Angrboða’s attention remained fixed on Thor. “Have you located this knife?”

“Not yet.” Distaste flickered in his eyes at her nearness, but he did not give her any ground whatsoever. “I wish to ask you a question.”

“And what do you offer in payment this time?”

“What is it that you want?” he repeated, and she only laughed.

“I shall add it to your total.” One hand lingered high upon her collar, fingertips light over the pulse Jane could see beating steady beneath the blue skin and dark ridges of her throat. “So then: ask your question, Odinson.”

“Did Loki leave anything here on Jötunheimr?”

The brutality of it cut through the air like the sword she had never seen him wield. Angrboða was unmoved, and unsurprised. “Ah. So you know of his journeys here?”

Something worked in his own throat at her calm acceptance, though Jane could hear no crack or break in his reply. “Not in any detail. But I know he had come, and likely more than once. Did he seek your company, then?”

Jane sensed something off in Angrboða’s reply, lightly as it was given. “Only rarely. But yes, he did.”

A thinning of his lips was his only concession. “And did he stay with you?”

“Ah, jealousy.” Yet for all the mocking of her tone, Jane could not quite pin down on whose side the jealousy had been felt most keenly. But Angrboða’s smile had faded, her eyes narrowed further still. “No, not often.”

“He had his own lodgings?”

That made her laugh, humourless and sharp. “Of a sort, I would suppose so. He did not share their whereabouts with me, and of course by the time he found his way here he was more than adept at concealing his movements from those he did not wish to share himself with.”

For this Thor had no ready answer, and Jane did not like the calculating look Angrboða gave him then. Yet neither spoke, and it was Angrboða who gave a thoughtful little sound before running one hand’s fingertips over the others, as if counting off unspoken thoughts.

“So. You seek the knife – and after your visit with Hela, you think that Loki’s former belongings might tell you something you wish now to now?”

Thor’s expressionless face gave nothing away. “They might.”

“Curious.” One finger tapped against the rich curve of her lips, pursed as they were into a moue of displeasure. “But I cannot help you any further than I already have.”

Jane had no way to tell if she lied. From the tightening of Thor’s jaw, he thought much the same.

“Thank you for your assistance,” he said with stiff gratitude, and she only rolled her eyes skyward.

“It was gladly given.” Whether that was a lie or not, it didn’t seem to matter. As she turned away Jane could only be grateful that at least this time she’d been spared the sharp side of the witch’s tongue. But then her voice came across the space between, herald of an avalanche.

“Odinson!”

His jaw tightened, but he did not look back. “Yes?”

“There is one thing you might offer me, should you find this knife.”

And now he turned, eyes very cold. “I cannot give you the knife. Hela has already laid her claim upon it.”

She waved a hand, dismissive and almost bored. “The knife never did answer to my hand; that is hardly my concern.” And now her smile was back, that which had too much in common with the bloodied snarl of a feeding wolf. “But I would ask a boon of you, before it is returned to the queen.”

“What would that be?”

“A moment alone. With the shade of your brother.” The grin she flashed then showed everything of her teeth, made Jane think of wild animals and feral hearts. “We have…unfinished business, you see.”

Thor stiffened, a golem of ice and unseen rage. “That is something more his choice than mine.”

And Angrboða only laughed. “Ah, but without my aid, it is no choice at all.”

“We shall see.”

“We shall indeed.” The flash of her eyes was as crimson as the spill of blood upon a battlefield. “You do not wish to renege on payments due the Witch of the Ironwood, Thunderer or not.”

She could all but hear the grinding of his teeth. “I am bound by my honour.”

“And what a pity that must be,” she said, and gave a mocking little curtsey. “Good travels, Son of Odin.”

For Angrboða, at least, it seemed as if Jane did not exist. In contrast Thor stayed very close by her side as they began their hike back up the ridge, his gloved hand often enough brushing up against her own. She cleaved to him without question. Though no coward, this place left her in a quandary of unease. The weight of her satchel assured her of the promise of home, and she clung to that almost as tightly as she did the ground beneath her palms when her feet alone were not enough to keep her upright.

On the other side of the ridge they found Mánagarm snoring, the noise roughly equivalent to a jet engine’s idling. Though it woke in a distinctly playful mood, Thor’s own mood had turned distinctly sour. They did not ride, either. Instead they plodded along with the great beast at their side. Jane could see they seemed to be going back to the site from where they had come, slow as their progress was. Thor’s closed expression forbade talk. But she was working up to it when he pulled to a sudden stop.

“We should rest, a moment. Give this matter some thought.”

While Jane carried her gear in her satchel, Thor had brought along a bag of his own. She suspected it had likely been a gift of Loki’s, considering that the volume of things she had watched him load into it bore very little resemblance to its comparatively humble outer dimensions. What he withdrew now proved to be several protein bars and a bag of Pink Lady apples.

Sitting down in the snow, Jane accepted only an apple though her knotted stomach protested the thought of even that. Thor leaned against Mánagarm’s great bulk, munching his way through two bars before starting on the apples himself. He tossed two in quick succession to Mánagarm, who took them from the air with surprising delicacy, while he himself only stared off into the distance. The hammer and his bag lay at his side. The gear was in her own satchel, and for reasons she had never entirely understood, Thor had placed Loki’s daggers into her own bag too. Her palm pressed down over where they lay, wrapped in silk and velvet at the very bottom, and she imagined she could almost feel them vibrate beneath her faint touch.

_The daggers. Hela said—_

“Thor,” she said, sudden and high, “you do a lot of hunting, right?”

He blinked, glanced over. “I do.”

For a moment the thought would not come together, not fully; she turned it around in her head, sought frantically for its source. “I know you don’t know a lot about Mánagarm or Jötunheimr, not in detail, but…looking at it, what do you suppose it uses to hunt?”

Craning around, Thor gave the frost beast a thoughtful survey. One hand passed over the vicious curve of the nearest mandible; though by now drowsing, it gave a happy rumble in return. “I do not believe his eyesight very good,” he murmured, and Jane’s own eyes went very wide.

“You could have told me that _before_ we rode it!”

The grin he tossed her had turned very boyish and carefree. “I suppose so. But his hearing is very acute, I should think, though he seems not to make many noises of his own.” Removing a glove, Thor traced his fingers with easy contemplation over the claws of faintly twitching feet. “This padding is for insulation and grip alike, but I would assume he feels vibrations through the ice too.”

Jane considered the rumbling sounds she had heard it make. “Elephants are a bit like that, I think.”

“I am not sure of what an elephant is, but his hearing would be well outside even my range. He likely hears for miles around what moves over the snow and ice.” Thor glanced back to the direction in which they had come; the distant seracs of the glacier glinted in the dying light. “I suspect it helps him traverse the icefalls and crevasses.”

“And what do you think its sense of smell is like?”

At that he only shrugged. “I cannot be sure, I have not seen him hunt. But in such an environment it would be needful; whereas sight is not so important in a world with little contrast, to both hear and scent his prey—” His eyes widened, voice cutting off as suddenly as a lightning bolt from the blue. He stared at her, mouth opening, closing, finally forming just one word. “ _Jane_.”

She could not stop her smile at the gleaming hope of his realisation. “Yes.”

Given she was already holding her satchel out to him, he had withdrawn the daggers from its depths within in mere seconds. Jane had to catch the discarded wrappings while Thor turned to Mánagarm, who had raised its great head in interest while its chosen master had worked himself into sudden frenzy.

Thor’s hands shook when he held them out to the creature, the blades lovely and lean in the cradle of his palms. Mánagarm examined them with something like confusion in the gleam of its crimson eyes. Jane’s heart climbed in her throat, clenching tight, breaking at the dimming hope in Thor’s own eyes.

But then Mánagarm gave a surprisingly delicate snuffling breath. Having run both lips and tongue over the blades it looked up, met Thor’s eyes with an unspoken question. Jane had no idea if the Alltongue applied to animals and beasts, but Thor’s answer said he himself held no doubt whatsoever.

“Find.”

The thick tongue lolled out again. Ridiculous as it still seemed, Jane again figured it was as close as the creature could ever come to an actual grin. Thor glanced over at her with a terrible joy in her eyes, and her stomach fell through her boots.

“Couldn’t we just _fly_?” she asked, weakly, and he laughed like a storm unleashed.

“What would be the fun in that?”

“You know, Thor, in some ways you and I are very different people.”

His hands came tight about her waist, and hers scrabbled for purchase on his shoulders as he swept her up, swung her around so that her hat flew off and her hair fanned out in a wild wave. “Isn’t that what makes it _interesting_?”

When he let her down she staggered, accepted her hat back with a roll of her eyes. “That’s one word for it, I suppose.”

Jane saw very little of this unusual hunt, being that she clung tight to Mánagarm with both elbows and knees like some sort of demented jockey. Much as she knew Darcy would have laughed herself sick at the sight, Jane would have liked to see _her_ be anything but terrified as the frost beast careened and leapt and almost seemed at times to _fly_ across ice and snow and serac.

She barely even registered the end of the chase, realising what had happened only when Thor gently slid her from its back. After finding her feet, brushing away what felt a layer of snow from her coat and hat, she squinted at what Mánagarm had led to them to.

“It’s another cave.”

“Indeed.”

Swallowing hard, Jane looked to the darkness within. Somehow it reminded of the great doors of Loki’s chambers. Though nothing of the sort stood here, Thor’s words about them hung heavy over her mind.

“He will have warded it, surely. Like his rooms.”

“I do not doubt it.” He gave her a faint smile. “But such seiðr does not always hold after the death of its caster.”

“You said your mother’s gardens would still bloom.”

He looked first surprised, then oddly gratified. “I did.” But that reminder did nothing to deter him, and as he stepped forward she had to give voice to her doubts.

“I don’t think this is such a great idea.”

Thor did not look back. “Loki’s wards never closed me out.”

“Really?”

That did have him looking back, his expression deeply hurt. Jane winced.

“Thor, I—”

“Jane. I must try.”

Again she groaned, pressing her hands over her eyes. Somewhat to her surprise her own actions were echoed by an unhappy rumble from Mánagarm. Jane really did have absolutely no idea when the world had gotten quite this crazy. Then she realised she wasn’t even on her own world anymore anyway.

“We didn’t think this through,” she said when she dropped her hands, and Thor shook his head. He held one of the daggers in his hand, what little light remained to the Jötunn day glinting from its diamond-sharp edges.

“I did.” Twisting his wrist, his eyes traced its fullered groove. “These daggers were blessed by his own hand. If anything would endear me to the wards that is not my own self, it would be the weapons he forged with his seiðr.”

Such logic meant very little to her. “Are you sure?”

“They are not Mjölnir.” He flicked his eyes over to hers, and they were the same silver-blue of the fingers of split lightning. “But they were dear to his heart.”

Letting out a long and shaking breath, Jane could only surrender to his superior knowledge of his own people and culture. “You warrior types really are nuts.”

“Such is the nature of battle and war.” Leaning forward, he pressed a light kiss upon her lips. Even as she blinked up at him in surprise, a jealous rumble came warningly from their left. Thor glanced over with a carefree laugh.

“Oh, if you insist,” he said, and kissed the creature on what passed for its forehead. Jane pulled a face, resisted the urge to swipe her arm over her lips.

“Yeah. _Definitely_ nuts.”

Thor’s grin couldn’t be shifted, even as he turned to the open mouth of the cave with the dagger held lightly in his hand at his side. Wrapping her arms about herself, Jane briefly contemplated clambering up onto Mánagarm; it would be the swiftest escape route if something went terribly awry in the next two minutes. Yet it seemed she had no need to worry, at least on the matter of the wards being set to string like a trap. Thor had taken barely two steps from her when someone emerged from the cave. Thor stopped dead. His disappointment rolled over her like a wave, crushing and miserable.

“What is it?” she asked. His shoulders slumped, voice barely audible even though he was almost in arm’s reach.

“It is a frost giant.”

“Pretty small for a giant,” she said, and was cursing her runaway mouth even before it raised its head, pushing back the furs that hooded its face. In that moment everything changed, as if the world had been yanked utterly inside out. Only Thor’s whisper hung upon the alien air, as soft and strange as the cool breath of a summer’s last night.

“ _…Loki?_ ”


	7. 2.1: Positional Advantage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two quick notes: Firstly, I just wanted to say thank you, again, for reading along; this story's really not what I generally would write in this fandom, but I am loving the experience. I've also been fascinated by some of the comments I've read, especially when it comes to Thor's characterisation here because in many ways I actually find him more difficult to pin down than Loki. 
> 
> Secondly, the updates will slow down beyond this point because I started posting with the first six complete, and life's just gone and made itself considerably more complicated. I do, however, have the next chapter complete and the five following it in varying states of draft, so it will keep coming. I hope you'll stick with me for the rest of the ride, but either way: thank you for coming along with me this far. You're wonderful. <3

His instincts had but rarely betrayed him. In that it could be nothing but so very easy to give himself over to them without restraint or thought. Moving forward, a half-remembered voice shouted to him of distant memory: _don’t let them touch you!_ But Thor could do nothing but reach out for the one standing motionless before him, a blind man seeking anchor in the uneasy roil of a storm at sea.

The skin burned with cool flame beneath his touch and yet did not scorch flesh even as he traced with fingertip thick ridges of unknown pattern. His hair held the same softness of before, that familiar black hue that had always seemed to have more in common with Odin’s ravens than the king himself. But then Loki had been like a third familiar to the Allfather when he had been small – he had flitted about palace and city alike with watchful eyes, taking in information so he then might hoard it away in the locked chest of his clever little mind.

Thor’s heart gave a painful leap, as if remembering that it must continue to beat if he wished still to live. Driven by its motion Thor leaned violently forward, pressing together their foreheads until they could do nothing but breathe the same air. Both hands closed about the other’s jaw, thumbs brushing the skin, working in low frantic press; who it was meant to soothe more, he did not know.

“Loki.” It came out as little more than a child’s uncertain plea. “It truly _is_ you, isn’t it?”

The crimson of those eyes examined him with a curiosity both unguarded and candid. The last time Thor had been under such scrutiny, those eyes had belonged to the king of the Jötnar. In these eyes he could see something of Laufey now: sharp and knowing, by turns considering and cruel. But in that, too, it could be nothing but Loki. Lies came so easily to his lips, but Thor already knew the truth. Some part of him despaired at that – for he suspected that was the only reason why Loki gave it to him now at all.

“Hello, Thor.”

“Loki,” he repeated, stupidly. Misery and shock had rendered him all but mute, though he could feel the rising burn of something like anger beneath. The rumble of nearing thunder only heralded a storm waiting to break over their exposed heads. He felt Loki shiver with it, as if he had heard the faint sound of a lullaby from childhood he’d long thought to have forgotten the tune of.

“Thor,” Loki said, again, with surprising patience. And still Thor could not move away, foreheads pressed yet together, their eyes locked and loaded. The movement of his own hands upon his younger brother had not ceased, though Loki remained still and unmoving. In that, at least, all was so very similar to a night so long ago upon a Midgardian cliff: Thor asking everything, Loki giving nothing, neither of them knowing anything of what was still yet to come between them.

“You are dead,” he breathed, hoarse with hope and disbelief, and Loki barely shook his head.

“Apparently not.” When he smiled, his lip curved with the vicious amusement he had once reserved for those who called him _ergi_ and _nithing_. “I do hope I didn’t inconvenience you too much, what with all the mourning and funeral arrangements. Though I suppose at least you’d had the practice.”

Thor stumbled back as if struck. Loki remained before him, more vital and real than any of his projections could ever be. And yet Thor had never seen him in this form despite the quiet confessional of his father in those dreadful days after the fall.

This Loki was blue of skin, crimson of eye. He remained lean and strong with it; in fact he bore a striking similarity to Angrboða, emphasised by the distortion of the air about him that whispered of a seiðmaðr born and bred. His hair was longer than Thor had ever known it, and though it might have covered such protrusions, Thor could not see between or beneath anything of the bony ridges he had observed on the warriors at Útgarðr. In this form Loki did not even wear his usual princely garb, instead clothed in long furs with thick leather trousers stuffed into his low boots.

Thor had something more to say. The words had been on his lips from the moment Loki had lain back on the blasted soil of Svartálfaheimr and let death bear him away like a stolen shadow. But Loki now only smirked, waved a hand like nothing else could ever matter again at all.

“It seems you will never stop falling for my tricks. Brother.”

A roar ripped free of his throat, wordless, but with a thousand thoughts woven into the torn and tattered fabric of his fading sanity. The entire realm shook beneath his feet as if the sound had loosed an avalanche. He did not move. He did not surrender. Thor simply threw his head back and _screamed_. In that mutiny of grief, fury and desire coiled together to call forth fresh tempest; dislodged ice beat already at his skin, twisting in the force of a hurricane roused and ready to devour all in its vicinity.

There came a distant scream, with the rumbling of Mánagarm rising to first a howl, and then a shriek that seemed fit to rip the universe apart from its very centre. He did not care. A hazy red mist had fallen over everything like the promise of a bloodied funeral shroud, Mjölnir pulsing in his hand like a second heart. She carolled onwards, ceaseless in her demand for the sacrifice that would keep her beat strong and true for longer than he himself might exist as a person, as a warrior. All she asked of him in this moment was that he become little more than a soul given over to the gore and glory of one made only to kill.

And he could feel another before him now, bright and brilliant and so filled with _life_ that all he wanted to do was bring the uru face of Mjölnir down upon its head. It would crack the skull open so he could go to his knees, gathering its spilled brains in his hands and devouring the organ warm and bleeding so he might drink of its thoughts and memories. Only then would nails rip into the ragged rise and fall of its guttering chest to draw out the pulsing heart, raising it to the raging skies as blood flowed from split chamber and opened atria, painting his face in the runic markings of victor and warrior. In that he would assume that damned brilliance, taking it to himself, so that it would never be separate from his own again.

_Take it_ , she whispered. _You are the victor_.

And the voice laughed, incredulous and wondering. “You fool.” Hands closed on his face, cold and possessed of preternatural strength as they yanked him around, Mjölnir a demanding weight in his hand yet. His fingers tightened, the charge of her desire twisting up over his wrist, shrieking through his veins, making his heart grow until it felt the beat of it would burst through his chest like a wardrum, driving the world to its knees with the shattering sound of its death staccato.

And the world was _red_ , crimson and brilliant, centred in the eyes that opened so wide before him, the mouth below opened on a snarl. “Stop this. Stop it _now_.”

He smiled, felt his teeth cutting through the ragged remains of his lips, bloodied and brilliant white. “No.”

And he laughed, bright and disbelieving, nails digging into his skin like anchors as they stood at the centre of the storm. “You do always have the capacity to surprise me,” he whispered, and then the lean sinuous body was leaning forward to curve into and about his like a constrictor. It ended with them forehead to forehead again, as they might have been in the womb had they truly been twins as they always wished as children.

_But then it’s the childhood wishes that stay with us the longest_.

The storm moved about them, and how he wanted to drive forward, to sink his teeth into the throat beneath those furs, to rip open the horned skin and dig his hands into the pulse of dying flesh, seeking the soul anchored within so he might hold it raw in his fingers and know at last the truth of its darkest corners.

And those eyes, bleeding crimson, never left his. “Brother,” he whispered. It seemed an incantation destined only to summon fury and misery, and his own hands snapped tight about the throat now entirely exposed to his rage. Mjölnir had fallen by his side, sparking and leaping in the snow like an overcharged dynamo. Tightening his fingers, he could feel the pulse of a heartbeat quickening like hummingbird wings while small blood vessels broke open to blossom in bruise beneath even that alien skin.

Yet he never looked away, this one before him, eyes opened wide in challenge. There was no hammer, no dagger between them here. But then the other had never needed ought but his silver tongue and quick fingers – and the berserker had been born into him, and he needed nothing but his own hands to bring down death upon all the worlds. But it was not the nine realms that needed to fear now. The desire instead coiled around the need to make this one bleed, for his own heart felt to have been flayed wide open with nothing of its own left to give.

“Loki,” he whispered. And even with the breath near-stolen from him, the creature before him smiled, and could be named nothing more than his brother in form yet unknown.

“ _Thor_.”

Just like that, all he could think of was how very tired he was. Mjölnir had already fallen, but when he opened his fists now the entire sky seemed to come down with it. Swaying on his feet, Thor cast blindly about, the winds dropped and the air gone oddly quiet. Despite the fact he ached in every bone, muscles burning as if distilled to liquid fire, it seemed he had done very little damage to the surrounding landscape after all.

_But then it’s hardly the landscape that you put most at risk._

“Jane.” The name left him in a hoarse whisper, even as he turned around again so fast he nearly fell. Mjölnir still lay abandoned in a pedestal of frozen snow as he whipped back in the reverse direction, panic gripping his heart like a cage. “ _Jane_!”

A small figure emerged from the blue-white of the surrounds, coming out from behind what appeared an ice barrier. There was only one way it could have been raised, unnatural as the smooth face was, but Thor did not think of it. He only crossed to her, snatched up her hands, then cradled her face as he searched her eyes for pain.

And his heart ached to see how she flinched under his touch, terror warring with what seemed to be wonder and awe alike. “What the _hell_ was that?” she demanded, voice shaking almost as badly as her body, and he wanted nothing more than to tell her he was sorry. Yet he could not find words enough to explain something he scarcely understood himself. But then, of course, Loki had always known. And he had never been able to keep his mouth shut when it mattered most.

“There are ways that one can be brought down from the berserker. Though it is more unusual that it could be done by the one who had invoked it.” With a low chuckle, the remnants of battle already fading from his skin like so much unheeded memory, Loki placed one hand upon a slim hip and gave a careless shrug. “But then, Thor and I always have shared an unusual relationship.”

He knew that he should have stayed with Jane. Her scientist’s heart might have kept her near when she should have run, and her friendship would be just as tight a chain strung between them, but brotherhood drew him from her. The words rasped like ground glass over the rawness of his throat as he turned from Jane, stalked close to his erstwhile brother. “You provoked me to that.”

Loki held his head high, clever hands now concealed beneath the folds of his furs. “I did.”

“Why?”

“Why do I do anything?” Despite the challenge of the words, a moment later Loki raised one hand, the palm open and flat. Thor’s brow knit in tangled confusion though Loki himself looked suddenly nothing but very tired. “Thor, I do not wish to fight.”

Indignation had his voice rising in an inflection he had not used since they had been small boys fighting over possession of a favoured toy. “You just said you did!”

“Will you ever learn to listen?”

“Will _you_ ever learn to speak in anything but riddles and jest?”

“Possibly not.” There was something else on his tongue waiting to be spilled like poison masked as poetry, of that Thor had no doubt, but Mánagarm gave an unhappy rumble and lumbered close to his side. With the distance closed between them the beast nudged into his waist with his great head; Thor turned, stroking his fingers over his skin with a cajoling pitter-pat to the motion.

“It is all right, Mánagarm.”

“ _Mánagarm_ ,” Loki repeated, slow and disbelieving. He looked to Jane, and she returned it with an expression that said she had no idea what to say herself. Then he turned back to Thor, looking very much as he might be getting a headache. “This ice beast is _yours_.”

Thor did not slow his soothing. “I think he belongs more to himself, but he does like to accompany me, it seems.”

And Loki only snorted.  “How like you to come with your little pets – a mortal and a frost beast.” Taking a carelessly planned step to the left, he gave a critical tilt so far he might have fallen, had he been anyone but Loki. “Collecting a set, are we? Although do tell me – of the two, which one do you truly prefer to warm your bed with?”

The punch took him right in the middle of face. Driven down on the ground as Loki had been, Thor was content to leave him there while taking a step backwards with fists still bunched. Loki made no retaliatory move, one hand covering both nose and mouth. Removing it a moment later, Thor could see in the delicate cup of his palm blood that had such a dark red tint to it that it seemed almost purple. When he glanced upward, it was with the wryness of a cocked eyebrow.

“Did we not have a conversation about how hitting things rarely solves one’s problems?”

“Did I say I expected it to solve anything?”

“Ah, so now we have degenerated to the level of mindless violence, then?”

Thor shrugged, let it melt into a brilliant grin. “No. It just made me feel better.”

Loki stared at him. Then his startled expression switched again to a wry smile, and he tossed the blood to the snow before levering himself back to his feet. “I don’t know why I ever worried. You never change.”

A frisson of something odd indeed tripped its way down his spine. Passing a hand back through his hair, Thor let the weariness of a berserker rage barely averted turn his face away from the parody of his once-brother. “And neither do you, it seems.”

“Oh, I have changed rather a lot, have you not noticed?”

“Likely less than you believe yourself.”

The low reply pressed a harsh silence down between them. Everything in him yearned to turn back to Loki, but an uneasy movement behind him had him turning again to find Jane standing with arms wrapped tight about her small body, lips held in fierce frown as she looked not once away from Loki. A rush of sudden affection hit him like a tidal wave, followed but a moment later by a second, harder strike of hot guilt. The strength of her character never ceased to amaze him; he knew many an Asgardian who would have rapidly vacated the vicinity of any argument between the Princes of Asgard, even before Loki’s terrible fall from grace.

But much as he wished to return to her side, to assure her that he would not again lose his temper nor his hold on the berserker blood that simmered in the deepest chambers of his warrior heart, he could not yet walk away from his brother.

Thor stepped toward him again. Loki swayed backwards ever so slightly, but held his ground. His nose had stopped bleeding, showed no sign of having broken; it seemed a hardy constitution applied to the runts of the species as well as the warriors. Still Thor’s stomach clenched. Even in the blindest fury of a child’s anger he had never hit his brother without regretting it later.

A gentle hand came to rest upon his neck with the pad of a thumb pressed against the upward curve of his jaw. Loki flinched, but did not duck or draw away from Thor’s unexpected touch. He simply went very still, eyes watchful above an oddly silent mouth, hands lax at his sides.

“What are you even _doing_ here?” Thor could not hide the agony of it. Loki blinked, and though Thor could see nothing of the thoughts that moved like fox-fire behind those eyes, he knew the natural cant of them. Lies came as involuntary to his lips as air to his lungs. Only when his emotions got the better of him did the truth escape Loki like so much air from an exploded balloon.

“I might ask you the same thing myself,” he said at last, conversational, as if they shared pleasantries over honey-cakes and tea of the lily. Thor’s jaw tightened, though his hand remained in soft curve against unfamiliar skin.

“The realms do not think me _dead_.”

“Oh look at that, you answered your own question. What a clever boy you are.”

“You wished the realms to think you dead?” The urge to take him about the scruff of his neck and shake him was almost overwhelming. “You wished _me_ to think you dead? Again?”

Appearing to sense the rising violence of his thoughts, Loki ducked away from his brother’s touch, gave a little scoffing laugh. “Much as I doubt you will believe me, causing you hurt was not the principal aim of this little endeavour.” The thinness of his smile sat very well with the sharp lines of cheekbone and jaw. “This time, at least.”

The provocation was open and easy, yet Thor did not walk into it. Instead he cast a glance to Jane, who stood with her arms folded over her chest, sharp eyes missing nothing. But she flicked them to him, nodded. Somewhat comforted, Thor moved closer to Loki again, wondered where to begin next.

“What are you hiding from?”

The eyes widened, the surprise in them only exaggerated rather than outright feigned. “I would clap, if I had the energy,” he said, and then pursed his lips. “But if we are to have this conversation, at least step into my parlour.”

“Said the spider to the fly?”

Loki gave Jane a considering look. “You are quite welcome to stay out here, if you prefer,” he said, utterly polite. “The suns will set soon and the temperatures will plunge to something far below freezing, but don’t let my consideration spoil the experience for you. The manner of your untimely demise is always and ever your own choice.”

Thor thinned his lips. “Is this a trick?”

“What isn’t?” And though he laughed, his eyes had turned very cold. “But if you leave me now, Thor, and come back in the morning – do not expect me to still be here.”

“I will find you again.”

Thor had never made a frivolous promise, and Loki leaned forward as if he might drink deep of his noble purpose. “Of that I have no doubt,” he said, light as the snow that had begun to fall with the spreading of dusk over the dull Jötunn sky. “But your knowledge of my living state will only serve to drive me further into hiding. You were never a very good liar. Why else do you think I had to do this?”

“You _had_ to do nothing.”

“You _understand_ nothing.” Now his impatience began to show, the way it had when they’d been children arguing over what game they would while away an afternoon with. “But I am offering you explanation, and freely enough at that. Do you want it or not?”

He could have been teetering upon a precipice, for how he felt that a fall awaited him no matter which way he stepped now. It was too easy to remember how it had been on their return from Midgard following the defeat of the Chitauri army. They had arrived on the Bifröst, not far from its broken edge, where the skeletal beginnings of a new Observatory were rising in arches from the repaired focus of the crystalline conduit. Muzzled, Loki could say nothing at all. Thor had simply chosen to hold his own silence. There had been nothing left to say, not even when Týr had stepped forward with a phalanx of Einherjar fanned out behind him.

Though Loki already wore manacles about his wrists, they had then closed more about his waist, his throat. Thor had gone no further. He had only watched as they led him away like a rabid dog being taken to the killing floor. Only Heimdall had remained, a strong and silent presence at his side.

“Will Father execute him?”

“No.” The guardian had not once looked away from the slow procession making its way along the bridge, its sound discordant even beneath their steady marching step. “Your mother will never allow it.”

Thor had not followed. Instead he had returned to the palace and to the comfort and company of friends both old and new. In a tavern warm with light and laughter a woman he’d known from years before had offered him the oblivion of her embrace. Instead he had kissed her fingers, taken his leave, and retired to his own chambers.

But he had not thought of Loki. The rainbow bridge stretched to what had been the ragged terminal edge of Mjölnir’s rage, where new growth overtook the broken remains of the old. The regrets he allowed to take him then had been for a mortal warrior he had seen skewered upon an alien blade, and a true friend whom he had not been able to see at all.

Thor had not seen Loki again until Kurse’s destruction of the prisons; they had not even spoken until Loki’s own release. He could turn away from Loki now, as he had then. But then the Norns had placed their destinies in one another’s paths, criss-crossing and looping back upon themselves, and they had been able to do nothing but walk that road side by side.

His eyes moved to Jane. Wrapped as she was in layers of fur and leather, she still looked terribly small against the gigantism so inherent to the landscape of Jötunheimr. _And how the Norns have worked their ways to bring us together, again! Who am I to rage against the weave of those three at their terrible loom? When not even Mother could speak of what she saw in the threads they let her spin herself?_

“Give it to me,” he said with heavy heart, and Loki snorted.

“Always the demanding one.” Yet he stepped with light grace to one side, sketched a mocking bow; one hand he curved before his waist with palm cupped and upward, the other stretched out to indicate the cave. “Ladies first?”

Thor took the lead, Jane coming close by his side. Half a beat behind, Loki moved with the silent stalk of the hoar-wolf. “Always the pretty princess,” Loki muttered, and when Thor turned with the blaze of storm in his eyes he just smiled, tilted his head to match the rise of his shoulders. “I _do_ like your hair. Did Sif help you with the braids?”

“I’m beginning to wonder how I ever missed you.”

“But you did.” Simple truths tended to hurt more than even the most complex of lies; somehow it still surprised Thor that Loki knew the difference. “Come, have a seat at my hearth. It’s rather humble by your princely standards, I suppose, but it shall have to do.”

Indeed, the closeness of the entrance that had him ducking his head and breathing in soon opened into a great chamber of irregular curves. Near its centre a sunken firepit smouldered with a flame that flickered white, blue, and deepest indigo; the light played over the walls like a shadow play, chattering and ever in motion. There were few enough furnishings or belongings, but his breath had been knocked from him. Loki’s former chambers on Asgard had been a mausoleum without a body. This cave pulsed like a heartbeat, and everywhere he could taste the iron tang of his brother’s blood.

He looked away. Yet Loki followed his eyes, took it for a glance backwards, and rolled the crimson of his own.

“What?” And when Thor turned to him again, one hand waved towards what already seemed a distant world of snow and chill. “Are you concerned for the beast? Do not be. It belongs here. It will be quite content.”

Easy as the words were, Loki’s eyes held the hardness of blood diamond. Thor’s throat worked, struggled to birth the words that wished to arrive raw and screaming. “Are you sure?”

“It is barely more than a baby, but it is quite capable of looking after itself without Asgardian influence.”

Like a blade pushed deep into unsuspecting flesh, that hurt. But Jane was frowning, and Loki stared at her again with the kind of expression Thor recognised from the moments before he had stood at table, glass raised, preparing to flyt a seasoned warrior to tears by the power of his silver tongue alone.

“Do you doubt my words, Dr. Foster?”

“No. Not exactly.” She spoke very slowly, watching him with the wary caution of a child not sure if the dog’s choke-chain would hold. “I was just thinking of the wolves.”

“The hoar-wolves?” One hand rose, moved over the darkness of his hair to melt away the snowflakes that hung there like stars in the night. “Why? Even a juvenile could eat four of those slavering grunts for a starter and then decide to make a main course of the rest. There’s no need for such puerile concern from a mortal, I can assure you.”

Colour burned high in her cheeks, and her dark eyes glittered – and yet Jane did not look once away from the hard stare of Loki with his tongue sharpened to blade-like sheen. “It’s not that. It’s just…they don’t look like you. But those frost beasts kind of do. It’s…interesting.”

She held her chin high, a kind of defiance that couldn’t help but make Thor feel fierce pride even with the alarm it brought with it. But Loki only snorted. “They share a common ancestor with the Jötnar.”

“Really?”

His smile had nothing kind in it, even though he kept his teeth behind his lying lips. “Do not your mortal scientists claim that you all share descent from apes and monkeys?”

Jane’s expression wavered between surprise at his knowledge, and clear offense at the delight his tongue had taken in curving about the animal names as if they were the direst of insults. “Yeah, but—”

“Fascinating as debating parallel evolution with you might be, Dr. Foster, I have other matters to discuss with my brother.” Thin as the words were, the sweep of his arm held all the gregarious welcome of a host pleased to offer his chambers to guests both prized and pleasing. “So, if you would take a seat?”

What furniture there was seemed to go little beyond a low table and several constructs that groaned under the weight of books and jars and vials. Yet about the firepit Loki had an array of furs and pillows that proved remarkably soft despite their outward appearance of rock or bone. Even the scent of the cavern held a light musky sweetness, familiar enough that it reminded Thor of a home Loki had long since lost. His surprise must have shown as though his face were nothing but a pane of glass pressed over his thoughts, for Loki first glanced his way, and then snorted.

“I have been here for some time, yes.”

It could so easily be a lie. Thor had never developed the indifference it would take to truly be able to gauge his brother’s sincerity. “You _planned_ this, then?”

Neither the hurt nor the anger his tone held moved Loki overmuch. “Not precisely. Not what happened, at least. I just took my advantage where I could.”

They had arranged themselves about the fire in an unbalanced triangle; Thor and Jane made between them the shortest side, and Loki sat at its apex at equal distance from them both. The fire continued its violet-strange gleaming at their centre, and his eyes had turned indigo as he began to strip from himself the heavy furs he wore as a cloak. It peeled away as if a second skin, the pelt of what Thor suspected to be a great snow bear, and beneath he wore but a simple leather tunic and trousers. The runic markings of a Jötunn’s skin curved from the sleeves down the wiry strength of arm and about wrist, trailing down to the blackened nails that already held the curve of growing claw. When Thor glanced upwards, guilt in the swiftness of the gesture, he found himself hooked upon the harsh sarcasm of Loki’s smile.

Anger rose like a storm, twisted and turning darker with every passing second. “You _died_. I felt you die!”

“You did.” Loki nodded his head like a tutor offering a slow student vague encouragement, setting aside the furs. “I suppose you have Hela to thank for the fact I’m now somewhat otherwise.”

“Hela?” Under the shock, his anger could not hold. Bewilderment had him leaning closer, the heat of the unnatural fire a brand upon his face. “She said you were dead!”

Loki gave him a pitying look, one Thor remembered all too well from many a boyhood venture gone terribly awry. “I rather believe that if you consider her exact wording, you’ll find that that is not what she said at all.”

Words were not what he could remember of that last encounter – rather, he could see again the considering curiosity of the queen’s one eye, the deep green so very similar to that of the Loki he had known his entire life. He closed his own eyes, pressed the heels of his hands into both. “You are as bad as each other.”

“So it would seem.” When Thor looked to him again, vision blurred about its edges, Loki had tilted his head with deep consideration. “So you sought her out after my death, did you?”

“I did.” He considered evading the truth of it for but the shortest of moments. “I wished to borrow Sullt and Hungr from her.” Nothing could keep the irritation from his voice now. “As it turns out, somebody beat me to it.”

And the grin Loki gave him, light and easy, was so much like the one he had worn as a boy about his tricks that Thor almost gasped. “Ah. That is how you found me, then.”

“Yes.” Taking a long breath, he barely managed to steady himself. One palm still pressed hard against the rock of the cavern floor, firm even through the softness of the rug beneath him. “I…I wanted to speak to you.”

“And here I am.” In the silence that followed, he stretched his arms wide, a raven testing the winds before he gave himself over to their rise. “Nothing to say? Oh, well, I had not expected much.”

Thor leaned forward, hands slamming against the rock, the heat of the fire burning upon his cheeks like the tears he would not shed. “I could not sleep for thinking of you.” Hoarse, his words burst from him with the urgency of volcanic eruption. “It was… _different_ , to last time.”

And yet Loki did not move, sitting very tall on the other side of the firepit. “You were not so upset before because you still felt me. You knew I was there.” But he did not smile, as still as any one of the sleeping golem-guardians of Glaðsheimr. “This time, you could not. I was gone. Utterly and completely.”

Thor could not look away. “And I thought it the other way around,” he whispered, and this time Loki did give a low and humourless chuckle.

“I never did claim you to be particularly clever in such matters, Odinson.” And now he looked very tired, again, even as he waved the confession away like it had been little more than chaff on the wind. “But it is no matter, now. It just tells me that at least my shielding has worked.”

The words hurt badly enough that Thor could almost feel the blood of the wound congealing about his heart, tightening with every beat. Yet he only leaned back, waving a hand about almost too close to the fire. “So this is what it is? Shielding?”

“Loki of Asgard is dead.” He raised his hands again, shrugged his slim patterned shoulders; the markings over his skin writhed like serpents roused to battle. “No-one is looking for Loki of Jötunheimr.”

In some ways there was little he could say to that. _My brother is dead_ , his mind whispered, and yet he could not look away from the Loki the Norns had seen fit to return to him one more time.

“You said Hela is the reason you are alive.”

“Yes, well.” The long fingers laced together, palms pressed tightly together as if he held some secret between them he might never let loose. “It all comes back to Sullt and Hungr.”

“This is something to do with the bargain you made with her,” Thor guessed, though it was hardly a brilliant deduction; certainly Loki seemed in no way impressed.

“Indeed.”

“What is the bargain?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?” he demanded, even as Jane muttered something like _you’re just as bad as each other._ A moment later, she raised her voice, sounding more resigned than disbelieving.

“How can you not _know_?”

“I do not know the _details_.” Her uninvited contribution clearly irritated him, though he did not even look to her. “What I do know is that she will not release me from said bargain until it is complete. And that stretches unto death, it seems.” He leaned back upon the cushioned furs, one long leg stretching before him in a gesture almost arachnid. “This I found out when I fell from the Bifröst. I should have died a thousand times over. I did not.” His eyes had gone very cold, the crystalline glitter so very like the transmuted aether after Thor’s attempt to destroy it. “When Kurse presented me with the opportunity to die before you, I took it as given Hela wouldn’t let me remain that way for long.”

A thousand questions crawled in the meat of his mind like furious insects wishing to hatch and spill forth, devouring everything of the life Loki had lived without his knowledge. Yet Thor only clenched his fists, tried not to recall the terrible gaunt weariness of the creature that had emerged from the tesseract’s portal on Midgard. The present would take precedence over the past. “But that is not within her power,” he said, slow, and Loki’s mouth twisted.

“To resurrect the dead? No. But she can force a soul to remain with its body. Then, it is but a matter of healing.”

From the sickly curve of his grin, Thor could not doubt the agony of such involuntary process. Yet he could not reach for him either, his own skin very cold despite the furs, the fire. “So what are you hiding from?”

Loki’s face turned as still as a mummer’s mask. “Thanos.”

“Who is Thanos?” Although he suspected he knew. Loki shifted, drawing his legs beneath him, hands limp before the cradle of his thighs.

“The Titan who took command of the Chitauri homeworld.” His eyes darted sideways, caught on some memory he would not voice but could not ignore; by the time he fixed his gaze upon Thor again, he had clearly locked it within the depths of his own mind. “The truth of the matter is that he had little interest in me while I rotted in the cells beneath Glaðsheimr, but now that I am free…well.” Extending his hands, he turned their empty palms to the ceiling above like a penitent come before the altar with no sacrifice. “I still owe my debts to him. Do not doubt he intends to collect upon them.”

“But he cannot see you this way.”

“No-one can.” The very concept appeared to amuse him, for all Heimdall had observed for years that Loki could slip into the spaces of his sight like raindrops from a duck’s oiled feathers. “As I said, Loki of Jötunheimr is a new entity entire. I have never held the form long enough for anyone to take their measure of it.”

“But surely your seiðr—”

“I do not use it,” he said, sharp as a diamond blade in his interruption. “I am limited to what abilities my heritage allows. Mostly icework, but there is some more to it.” The laugh he gave now was high, the fluting sound so very like Angrboða’s that Jane actually recoiled from it. “It’s rather like losing my hands and legs. Or being castrated.”

Pity moved through him; for all he’d mocked Loki’s seiðr more than once over the course of their conjoined lives, he knew how very much his brother both depended upon and loved it. But the hard expression his brother wore would not allow Thor to express anything of that. Instead, he could only find another question.

“What is it that Thanos wants from you?”

“Knowledge, mostly.” He blinked, but only once. “I brought the infinity stones to his attention.”

Jane stirred in the thick cocoon of her borrowed blankets. “What _are_ the infinity stones, anyway?” When Loki did not immediately answer, she turned her question upon Thor with sharp demand. “Because you said that Sullt and Hungr were one. And then the tesseract and the aether are two others.”

Loki’s voice cracked like the whips he had favoured for but the shortest time of his weapons training. “Who told you that?”

“Fandral, actually.”

At Thor’s words Loki raised an eyebrow. “I never would have thought he would have such insight.”

“He came by it honestly enough.” Though Thor had no intention of telling Loki where the aether had been taken. “But that was what made me seek out Sullt. I thought it was but a legend, but with the tesseract and the aether…”

“Yes. They are very real.” Again Loki’s angular face had given over to the shadow and light in a manner that made it appear utterly unreal, an artist’s mere figuring of a creature no more substantial than a dream. “And Thanos now would like to lay his hands upon them.”

Whether he hid fear or delight with that mask, Thor felt his own unease like hot coals in his gut. “Which would do what, exactly?”

“Give him endless power.” Now he raised his chin, gave a little sigh as his eyes skipped away like a young girl flirting with her newest mark. “And he has a very demanding mistress.”

“Mistress?”

“Death.” He flicked his eyes back, face still turned away. The long shadows painted over his features with the same delicate grace as his Jötunn markings. “And believe me, he would give her all the dead she can take. And she can take them all.”

“You mean Hela?”

Jane’s voice appeared to startle him from his odd reverie; when he looked to her, his expression had twisted into clear annoyance. “Hela is a gatekeeper, specifically for the souls of those bound to Yggdrasil.” The scorn in his voice scraped over her dignity like a serrated blade. “There are more realms in this universe than the Nine.”

Much as he should have defended her honour, Thor’s mind could only latch upon one thought alone. “Loki, what have you _done_?”

“Nothing more than what many others would have done in my place.” He was without shame, without regret – and then he smiled too, tilting his head with a coy trickery. “Though I trust you can imagine I had little intention of just handing them to him like a good little boy.”

“I can imagine,” Thor replied dryly, even as his heart felt to have collapsed in upon itself like one of the black hole grenades wielded by the Dark Elves. “So what are you doing now? Looking for them for yourself?”

“Yes.” The simple honesty of it was too genuine to be anything but real. “I cannot be free while he considers me in his debt.”

Still, Thor could not fight down a sudden rising anger. “And before, while in prison? You would have just let the worlds fall to his ambitions, and not said a word to any of us?”

The knowing look in his eyes whispered the words he did not need to say – that Thor had never come to him to be told anything. “He wouldn’t have come to Asgard until it suited his plans – and as lovely a sacrifice as the golden realm would have been to offer up to his lady, he would prefer to settle simpler matters first.” He actually laughed then, the sound careless and utterly without caution. “He is very pragmatic, after all, my erstwhile patron.”

As warped as his brother’s sense of humour had become over the years, Thor had only begun to understand that laughter could be used as a shield against the mockery of others. His own voice held a raw demand when he looked down to his empty hands, Mjölnir having been left at the cave’s entrance. “You would have my aid.”

The smile reminded him of how Loki had leaned forward in his cell all those days ago, giving over to sharp interest even with the curve and collapse of his body beneath the weight of wild grief. “If you would offer it.”

“I do.”

He spoke the words almost without thought; only Jane’s hissing inward breath broke the silence. “Thor.” When he looked to her, nothing in her expression spoke of trust or understanding. “Is this really such a good idea?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s a terrible idea,” Loki volunteered with easy abandon. “But then he’s always been very partial to those. Come, let us have something to eat. Tradition says that if you break bread in my home, I can’t break your neck while you sleep.”

Jane reared back, eyes very wide. “We’re not sleeping here.”

With another of those innocent blinks, Loki gave a very long and tragic sigh. “Well, suit yourself. I’m sure you can curl up with Mánagarm outside. I will not be offended.”

“Loki.” But his brother scarcely reacted to the low rumble of the warning, even as Thor then drew Jane aside. Before he could speak she shook her head fiercely, hands curled into small fists in her furs.

“You can’t be serious,” she hissed, though he could have told her Loki’s hearing was acute enough that it wouldn’t matter. Instead he moved closer to her, his own voice scarcely above a whisper.

“I am.” Her mouth opened with clear exasperation, and he only just resisted the urge to close his hand over her lips. “Jane, it is but one night. You can return to Midgard in the morning—”

“No way. You think I’m leaving you alone with _him_?”

His heart swelled with warmth even as his mind shrank away from the very thought of it. “It is not your battle.”

“It is now.” Jerking a thumb back over her shoulder, she pursed her lips. “But I’m not sure which side he’s on.”

_I used to be. Now, I can scarcely believe what a fool I was. And yet still I cannot turn away_. Gathering her hands in his own, he squeezed them tight, as though that alone might chase away the chill of suspicion, of this very realm. “Trust me, Jane.”

She sighed. “It’s not _you_ I don’t trust.”

But still she came with him when they turned back to the fire, where Loki had already begun to set out the beginnings of a meal. Eying the curious repast of which he recognised very little, Thor let his stomach rumble his approval and tried not to consider how many mistakes a person might be permitted to make in one lifetime without risking absolutely everything they were lucky enough to still possess.

 

*****

 

Loki retreated into silence following the inconsequential conversation of their odd dinner, though he spoke long enough to explain to them both that there was a spring at the back of the cave where they might bathe. He even provided them with fresh clothing, though Thor could not imagine where he had acquired it from – or perhaps he just did not want to imagine it.

When Jane returned from her ablutions, Loki had been gone from the cave into the growing blizzard outside for some time; he’d said something or other about Mánagarm, and Thor had to feel gratitude as much as suspicion. Yet he was glad to have these moments alone. With her long hair damp about her shoulders, wrapped in furs, she held a simple beauty that he wanted to keep selfishly to himself.

Near the fire, she began the task of settling herself to bed. Thor moved over to offer what aid he could. Yet as he continued to fuss over the nest of blankets and furs Loki had provided to her with a sly grin, Jane reached for his hands, stilled them even with her small clever fingers. He swallowed hard, looked up to her searching gaze with a reluctance more suited to a nithing coward than a warrior long since blooded in war and arena.

“You will be all right?”

Though she snorted, he could take heart in the easiness of her smile. “Yeah. It’s warm enough. And you’re here.”

“I am.”

He stayed by her side as she lay down, helped arrange the fall of the furs and blankets so that no cool air might creep beneath in the night. Then he sat back, chin upon his palm. From the very first moment of their meeting he’d thought her a strange beauty. Delicate as she might be in both feature and build, her mind was a fierce and furious thing. As she slipped ever deeper into her sleep he watched her eyelids flicker in the throes of dreams none other would ever see. Her mind was always moving, of that he had no doubt.

“Now that you’ve settled your little mortal, perhaps you’d like to bathe yourself.” The voice drew closer, a chin resting upon his shoulder, breath tickling his ear as the whisper curled sharp about his muddled thoughts. “You stink.”

Thor jerked away, craned around just enough to fix a death glare upon his brother. “Thank you for the observation, Loki.”

Sitting back on his heels, he gave a shrug. “You really do. I’m surprised she managed to fall asleep, with that reek right beside her.” Then he pressed his palms to his knees, levered himself upright with a great sigh. “Oh, don’t give me that look. I know you don’t trust me with her, but it’s easily solved.”

“And how would that be?”

“I’ll come sit with you, where you can keep an eye on me.” There were too many teeth indeed showing in that smile. “Shall we?”

As much as he had to believe taking Loki at his word could only be a prelude to absolute disaster, Thor could not deny the ache of muscle and mind alike. Though he had not given over to the berserker, the simple act of its almost-loosing was enough to leave him in dire need of rest, not unlike their father’s slide into the Odinsleep. Certainly, despite the oddness of the fare Loki had had to offer, he’d already eaten more than his fair share of their dinner.

The bathing pool was deep into the rear of the cavern, found in an alcove both low-ceilinged and possessed of a sloping floor that dipped sharply into the waterline. Loki wordlessly handed him a bucket, turned his back, and set himself up in indolent pose at the arching stalagmites that crowded about the entrance. Thor only shook his head, and supposed his childhood tutors had always had that right: he was never going to learn.

First he stripped away his armour, then skinned out of the lighter tunic and trousers beneath. When he loosened his hair, he left only the braid behind his left ear in place. Filling the bucket from the spring, he found it just the slightest hint too warm, and welcome enough with it. Dampening his skin, he then worked up a lather between his hands with the bar of soap Loki had nonchalantly passed him. It had a faint scent of summer to it, and again he found he did not want to think too hard on where Loki had acquired his belongings from. Instead he took a fresh lot of water, dumped it with inelegant pleasure over his head. Only when the worst of the dirt and sweat had been washed away did he enter the spring with a low groan, every muscle relaxing at the same moment as if his body entire wished to dissolve into the mineral-rich water and leave his soul unanchored and free.

Thor hadn’t meant to close his eyes, but time slipped away on him; even without a timepiece to gauge it by, the fierce easing of his body spoke of its passing. Yet from what he could ascertain, drowsy and sluggish as his thoughts were becoming, Loki had not once left his line of sight. Sitting cross-legged at the far end of the pool by the entrance, his back remained to Thor and he made no sound at all. Perhaps the low gurgle of water into the spring might have masked the sound of his breathing, yet still Thor felt the sudden violent urge to reach out and touch him, to see if he was but an illusion, another trick worked to lull him to false security while he brought harm down upon Jane.

Still Thor tried to relax. Mjölnir awaited his return in the main body of the cave, quiescent in her own half-drowsing state; had Loki meant to do wrong by Jane, she would have called out to him, summoning him to the protection of a mortal he could not doubt she held a true fondness for.

_But then, for all Loki acted as though he cared not at all for the opinion of a hammer, she always had a fondness for him, too_.

The heat and ease of the water continued to seep through muscle all the same, lulling his thoughts halfway to sleep again. The hot spring seemed a strange thing to find here, but then he supposed even a land of ice and snow would have active geothermal vents. In a way, Loki himself embodied the same principle: the cool and calm exterior with a boiling mass of magma caged below. They almost had that in common, for all that Thor had always been the more gregarious of the brothers. Much as he had been taught to control it, the need to let the berserker go could come upon him sudden and unasked. Loki’s provocation had called it down this day – but Thor had never lost his handle on it so quickly, not even in the cemetery on Midgard the day Jane had tried to do her best by him by giving him opportunity to let what festered inside out.

_Only Loki has ever been able to do that, to me. For me._

“I would not harm her.”

Thor startled, water sloshing to life around him as he bolted upright. “What?”

“Your concern for your mortal. It is unwarranted.” He craned about in the dim light, face wrought in a partial shadow that reminded Thor uncomfortably of the half-ruin of Malekith’s face, the dual nature of Hela. And yet Loki only laughed at his scepticism. “Why should I kill her? After all, she is the one who brought you back to me.”

Beneath the ever-moving surface of the spring’s waters, Thor’s hands curved upon his palms, the motion as quiet as his voice. “I am not the one who left.”

In the silence between them Loki only stared, his tongue stilled at last. Thor leaned the ache of his spine against the hard rock, raised one hand to skim it across the pool; it scarcely reached a third of its circumference.

“If you wish to bathe, Loki, there is nothing to stop you.” Even he could not read the tone of his own voice when he added, “We have ever shared our bathing chambers.”

Loki’s low chuckle could have been the death rattle of drowned rat. “Not like this.”

He could not believe Loki spoke of place or time. “You are still Loki, no matter the form you wear,” he said with low resolve; in turn Loki only laughed, though by now he’d moved perhaps half a foot forward.

“Ah, but who is Loki?” he asked, leaning forward upon hands and knees like a monster from beneath a child’s bed. Thor faced him, eyes opened wide, and did not look away.

“Whatever he wishes to be.”

Rearing upward, Loki might have fallen over onto his backside had one hand flung quickly to the left not arrested his fall. A moment later he unfolded himself to his true height, waved one hand in casual dismissal. “If only all the realms were as simple as you,” he said, and rolled his eyes. “What makes you think I even bathe? I am a frost giant, after all. What use do I have for hot water?”

“Why else would you seek out a cave that bears it like fruit? Or lifeblood, as it were?”

Loki bared his teeth, the only semblance of a smile in the way his lips curled up and away. “Sentiment?”

But it seemed he’d miscalculated his blow; the word seemed to hurt himself more than they did Thor. With a shake of his head and a faint mental call to Mjölnir, Thor turned away from the small cavern’s entrance and trained his eyes upon where the dim lighting reflected from the rippling surface like a universe in constant rebirth. “Do as you would, Loki. It seems you always will.”

From the silence that followed, any other person might have believed Loki had departed. But Thor had always been sensitive to his younger brother’s presence. Scarcely minutes had passed before bare feet moved over the stone, and he scarcely made a sound as the long and lean body slid into the water. Thor turned back, found Loki perhaps a foot away and staring off into the middle distance. Though he knew it was a likely mistake, he could not keep it bottled away. Not when he’d believed for so long he would never be given such opportunity.

“Is it uncomfortable?”

Loki’s brow creased with his frown, but he did not look over. “What?”

“The heat?”

“No.” The word was given short and snappish, though a moment later he sighed, as if a great weight had been pressed down upon his hunching back. “If I leave it too long, perhaps. But…no.”

Though all the other muscles of his body had relaxed almost to liquid, Thor’s heart had the tightness of a clockwork spring. Too much of this was as it had been so long ago. A shared bath, two brothers in a contemplative silence together.

The need to put his hands on him came like a tidal wave of memory, for all Loki’s skin had become a strange and alien topography. Yet the need to map it, to find what was familiar and what was new, ached inside him. But he could not move. He did not dare. He only yearned for what was long since lost, and wondered if he was a fool for ever believing it had existed in the first place.

“You say you wished for the knife in order to speak with me.”

The disembodied voice floated to him in the half-darkness, curious and very nearly sad. Thor did not turn his head. “Yes.”

“Not to Mother?”

At first Thor remained very quiet. Then he shook his head, the damp ends of his hair dragging light across the muscle of shoulder and neck.

“No.” He had to take a long breath, let it go in trembling slowness, before he could speak again. “I…I do not dream of her, exactly. But I feel her. When I sleep.” The smile he wore felt as if it were splitting his face and his heart wide open. “Besides, I already know what she would say.”

Loki surged forward, one hand pressed sudden and sure over the exact place where Thor’s heart beat with faltering uncertainty. “ _Trust in what gives you your greatest power_ ,” he whispered, eyes bright and near-blinding. “ _And in those who make it so_.”

Thor raised his own hand, pressed the palm hard over Loki’s. His heart now thrummed high in his throat, giving his words unnatural beat, impossible clause even as he stared into his brother’s eyes and knew he did not speak of her alone.

“I miss her so much.”

Loki could offer only silence, even after his hand slipped away, never once dropping their locked gaze. The water had not cooled, but still Thor felt cold. Wordless, he rose from the spring, reaching for the drying sheets his fastidious brother had stacked so neatly near the water’s edge. He had dressed again in his tunic and trousers, a fur over his shoulders, turning for the door when he heard a splash from behind him.

“Thor.”

He did not turn around. “Yes?”

“Wait.”

Thor did not look back. Instead he stood alone, listening to the faint rustle of drying, of clothes being drawn over skin both familiar and alien. And then Loki came to his side, somehow seeming smaller in his subdued state.

“You have not cried for her.”

The whisper made him close his eyes, though he spoke the truth with a matter of fact tone. It still hurt. “No.”

“Nor for me.”

Thor had turned on him, crowding him against the wall without even quite meaning to. “Does that make my mourning less to you?”

The crooked smile made him seem strangely young. “I do not wish to argue, Thor.”

His brother had always been a creature of such contradiction; only he could rouse Thor to a killing rage, then think to speak to him of grief and mercy but hours hence. “A pity you’re so very good at it, then,” he said hoarsely, and Loki nodded.

“I would not deny it.” But he did not press any malice into it, and Thor supposed that was why he asked a question he’d sworn always to keep to himself.

“Did you cry for her?”

“Of course I did. I never could resist a good little sob, or so they say.” His lips curled, but Thor could not for the life of him tell where the ire was directed most. “Whereas the last time I remember seeing you cry, why, it was hundreds of years ago.”

“I remember,” he said, very low, and Loki rolled his eyes.

“Do you really?” The challenge in his eyes was writ clear. “Was it the _last_ time you cried, perhaps?”

“Like that, yes.”

He expected a sneer. But Loki only shook his dark head, eyes hidden by the fall of his unbound hair. “I always suspected as much.”

And a strange day, it had been, all those years ago. Thor had woken in the morning from a dream. He remembered little of it even then, but what remained had been strong and so very true: the song of a distant voice, calling him, summoning him, _demanding_ his presence. He’d shared absolutely everything with his brother in those days, and so it seemed only natural to pass through the shared bathchambers and climb into his brother’s bed, shaking him awake.

There they had lain with their legs entangled, pressed so close together their noses nearly touched, as Thor spoke in frantic elated whisper of what the song had told him. Mjölnir, he had told a dubious Loki, _Mjölnir herself_ had called him, asked him to come heft her to the heavens and call down the storm. And much as Loki might not have believed his brother’s arrogance could go even this far, he’d been curious enough. Mjölnir had promised Thor an open path to her, after all – and there had been no other way for two small boys to enter the great vault of the Allfather beneath Glaðsheimr without accompaniment.

That victory only sharpened his defeat when he wrapped his too-small hands about her haft and found that he could not be called worthy after all. The tears of frustration had been bitter and sharp, tasting of a grief that seemed too big for his still boyish form. Thor had known that his reaction was completely out of proportion to the situation, but it was as if he’d been given back a part of himself he’d never known he’d lost, only to have it denied one more time.

They’d spent the afternoon entire there, a tangled heap at the bottom of the great staircase leading up and away. With his head laid in Loki’s lap Thor surrendered so willingly to the gentle stroke of those clever fingers through his damp hair as he’d cried for something he didn’t even know how to name.

Yet when he’d finally looked up from his own sorrow, it had been to see that beloved face motionless and grave, bathed in blue light. The Casket of Ancient Winters had rested upon its dais, the white-blue of its heart ever shifting inside its crystalline cage. He remembered faintly wondering if it sang to Loki, as Mjölnir called to him. But then he remembered the story they’d been told but a year or so before. It was the tool of the Jötnar, and Loki was Asgardian. A tool of such savage beasts could not be meant for one as clever and knowing as his quicksilver brother. No prince of the blood would ever know the song of so terrible an artefact.

Now, realms away from that world, years away from that time, Thor gave a long and slow sigh. “Loki.”

And his brother just shook his head, slipping past him and back into the main chamber of the cave like a shadow. “Come with me.”

Jane slept on by the fire, her lovely face unseen in the nest of furs and wools, but Loki guided Thor past her without paying her the slightest heed. For the first time Thor noticed that there was another smaller chamber branching off from the first, with only a faint light burning in its darker depths. Loki ducked inside, though Thor only stood uneasy upon its threshold. When he turned, it was with a sharp exhalation of impatience.

“Well?” One hand extended, careless and easy in its invitation. “Come in, then.”

“No.”

Loki tilted his head, looking up at him from beneath dark eyebrows. “ _Thor_.”

“I cannot trust you.”

The words ached in his throat, acidic and unable to be swallowed back down. Loki’s eyes barely flickered. “No,” he murmured, “no, perhaps not. But let me give you this, at least.”

For a moment he disappeared inside. A moment later he stepped free again, a blanket folded over his arm. A jolt snapped through Thor like sudden current – he knew that quilt. Its mosaic pieces had been woven by their mother’s hand on her great loom as they’d played together at her feet. It had been but one of a pair. The other rested even now, carefully folded and lovingly placed, at the foot of his own bed.

In the shadows just beyond the gleam of the unnatural fire, Loki sat down. With the blanket placed to one side, he beckoned him closer, eyes watchful in the darkness.

“Brother.”

Without a word Thor crossed to him, lay down his head in his brother’s lap, surrendered to the sensation of the quilt fluttering down about shoulder and hip. He could be making a very bad mistake. In fact he was certain he was. But he gave himself over to it willingly, lost in the familiar scent of a world he’d thought lost to them both forever.

Sleep had not been his intention. He simply rested his eyes, a faint smile upon his lips as he recognised the low hum of one of their mother’s favoured lullabies. Thor had never had much of an ear for music, but she’d taught it to Loki centuries ago. He had always taken more readily to the arts of the skalds and bards. With a sigh, Thor let it bear him away on a river of salt and song, and then finally to sleep.


	8. 2.2: Pressure Point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally have an update ready. <3 I'd quite like to slip into a twice-weekly update schedule, but real life may not allow it. Which is irritating, as the fic really is eating my brain.
> 
> Thank you, again, for reading along; I love so very much to hear people's thoughts on the story and the characters, and I am humbled beyond words by [the beautiful graphic](http://takemetothedungeons.tumblr.com/post/68693376299/the-unnamed-days-by-clarice-chiara-sorcha) that [Miss Nefer](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MissNefer/pseuds/takemetothedungeons) created. <3 I just...wow. I still honestly have no idea what to say. But it's so very lovely, and I am always so amazed and grateful to have people along for the ride. Thank you!

When Thor woke in the morning he found himself lying on the stone floor alone. Loki had long since disappeared. But his heavy furs remained drawn over Thor’s body, which responded with hardly a twinge as he sat hurriedly up, casting his eyes about the cavern. Mjölnir remained where he had left her, and across the embers of the violet fire Jane slept on without stirring. Still there was no sign of his erstwhile brother, though Thor could not entirely regret it. Already he knew their previous intimacy to be lost with the night now gone. The quilt had vanished, too, and for a moment he supposed he might have imagined it.

But then he looked to the small chamber Loki had invited him into, and that he had rejected in turn. Mjölnir gave a faint warning twinge even before he thought to peer inside, and Thor could not doubt that what lay within was Loki’s, and Loki’s alone.

The faint twinge of guilt he’d felt upon waking only grew as he now crossed over to Jane and hunkered down at her side. Even if his previous abilities were now as curtailed as he claimed Loki could have done anything to her. Thor could not be concerned for his own sake, but it would have been beyond cruel to leave Jane to Loki’s temper and delusion.

Digging his fingers into his eyes, Thor found them red and scratchy with salt. The beginnings of a headache beat behind them, too, and he berated himself for a fool. For all he’d wanted nothing more than to speak to his brother again, he no idea how to deal with what was going on now. Loki never did anything with simple intentions.

_Not even to offer his brother comfort, where it was needed_.

But still he could not regret it. Though his exhaustion of the last few weeks had not lifted entirely, it had been the best night’s sleep he had had in years. He had lost half his family in the space of days. Now, he had one half of what was lost back. It was impossible to regret that, no matter the cost he might one day be asked to pay for it.

_And there is always a cost_.

He might have gone looking for Loki, but instead decided to stay with Jane. Even as he examined the fire and decided he had no clue if it needed to be banked or stoked or even fuelled, he supposed it was the residual guilt about how he had left her the night before. For all he’d often enough been to blame for many of the misadventures of their youth, Loki had just as frequently talked Thor into them. Even the worst of ideas could sound like the very best when Loki opened his eyes _just_ wide enough and smiled.

Thor was half-dozing again himself when Jane gave a groggy sigh, turned over in her sleep. Immediately he snapped to attention, and she blinked up at him in the fashion of a newborn kitten.

“Hi.”

The smile he wore was soft. “Hello.”

“Have you been there all night?”

“No.” Before she could even think to ask for details he could not give, he shrugged. “But I haven’t been awake for long.”

“I feel like I’ve been asleep half my life. Eat your heart out, Rip Van Winkle.” With a mighty yawn, Jane stretched her entire spine like a caterpillar that had bitten into Mjölnir. Then, a sharpening of her senses had sitting suddenly upright. “Where’s Loki?”

“I have not seen him yet this morning.”

“That can’t be a good thing.”

Thor gave another light shrug. “This is his home. I doubt he’d abandon it to us, especially given the circumstances.”

“Which he told us about,” she said with her lips pressed tight together, sharp gaze still taking in their surrounds in a manner he had often seen used by scouts and lookouts. “We can’t just take this stuff at face value.”

“While I’m willing to admit that Loki does not often deserve the benefit of the doubt, his story fits.”

“Maybe.” Having now drawn up her knees beneath the furs, she rested her chin upon them. The pensive look she wore seemed far too heavy for such an early hour of the morning.

“What is it, Jane?”

The lines in her face drew themselves deeper. When she did speak, it was only with great unhappiness. “I’m pretty sure your father knew Loki was here.”

“What?” The memory of the funerary rites rose, and he pushed it roughly aside; it was only rapidly replaced by the truth of the fact that Odin scarcely spoke of him. “No. _No_. Jane, that is impossible.”

Her hands moved very tightly together, knuckles whitening. “Do you remember how I was talking to him when you came in, when we went to Loki’s chambers back on Asgard?”

He’d felt something odd between them then. At the time he’d figured it was because he doubted the two would ever see eye to eye; something about the watchful way they circled about one another actually reminded him uncomfortably of Loki and Odin. They had always been too similar for their own good. “I do, yes.”

“I was looking at the window. I didn’t realise at first that it was Yggdrasil, but then your father was talking about Loki, and how even now he was gone that he would have left his mark behind in many places, and…and his fingers, they were on Jötunheimr the whole time.” Shamed, she could only just meet his eyes. “That was why I said we should go. To Angrboða, I mean. I…didn’t know if it meant anything or not, but I just…I had to check. For you.”

_For you_. He closed his eyes. Behind the lids he could clearly see the memory of Hela, hearing again how Jane had said that what he wanted was at odds with what she believed, and yet she had done all this for him all the same.

“But why wouldn’t he just tell me himself?” he asked quietly, opening his eyes. Jane shifted, winced as her toes escaped the warmth of her makeshift cocoon.

“Maybe he just worried about the influence Loki held over you, even when you thought he was dead.”

“But then why would he tell you?”

“Maybe he expected me to stop you.” That thought made her sigh, fingers tightening where she held the furs closed. “I mean, let’s face it – I really ought to hate him.”

He didn’t want to know the answer, yet still he asked the question. “And do you?”

“I don’t even _know_ him,” she cried, frustration ringing about the small space. “But _you_ do. And I know that much, at least.”

So much of his life had been spent in casting himself as the noble and brave warrior of a thousand tales and more – those told first by his mother at his bedside, and then in reality over the grand table by skald and bard. He knew now that he’d never really understood what it meant to be a good man, but even now he looked to Jane and knew he had done her great disservice.

“I am sorry.”

She frowned. “For what?”

“For bringing you here. Into this mess.”

She snorted, gave him a withering look that gave her an alarming resemblance to Sif. “No offense, Thor, but if I really hadn’t wanted to come here, I wouldn’t have. You’re good-looking as hell and a nice guy, but you know.”

“Your science.”

The strange flicker over her features could not be called an expression, rather only the ghost of one. Oddly, it reminded him of Loki when he’d been very young – before he’d perfected the ease with which he would lie for the rest of his life. “It’s not just that,” she said slowly, and his heart began to sink.

“If you wish to go home—”

“Don’t.” One hand rose as if she truly thought she had the strength to hold the lord of storm and thunder back. But then, the hard light in her eyes suggested she might have her ways, even before she added, “I’m in this now. And unless I have to, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Listen to the mortal, Thor. It speaks more sense than you ever will, never mind one should think you’ve had a thousand years of practice on it.”

Thor turned around to give his younger brother an irritated glare, but Jane just shrugged, pulled the blanket tighter about her shoulders. “Thanks. I guess.”

With a lovely smile, Loki skirted about the fire, moved to one of the makeshift shelves. “You do have your uses, Jane Foster,” he murmured as he began sifting through them; Thor tracked his movements, one palm pressed flat to the floor.

“Where’ve you been?”

“Seeing to breakfast.” Loki peered back over his shoulder. “Or have you lost your appetite in your days of mourning?”

“Why do you have to keep baiting him?”

Jane’s question did appear to take him off-guard, though Loki had always been quick on the uptake. “Ah, but you see, there are three common methods of hunting – baiting, stalking, and hounding. The first has always been the preferred, amongst the Asgardians. It’s more bloody and messy, for starters.”

“ _What_?”

“It’s a cultural distinction.” Rising, Loki waggled a glass jar in their direction. “Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

It had been empty, but Thor didn’t have the chance to ask him why; Loki simply moved too fast, and Jane was already rounding on him. “What the hell is he even talking about?”

The headache was back. “He’s just being Loki.” Levering himself upward, he cast about for his boots. “I will speak with him, while you dress.”

“Thor.” Jane had found her own feet, the furs about her like a cloak. “Are you really sure this is such a good idea?”

He could not help but think of their mother. Frigga had always said that when they were but two little boys, they could shut out the entire world between them. Jane seemed terribly small, and wan in the dim light of the cave. Very suddenly he did not want to leave her. But he had to go to Loki.

She did not object when he stepped forward and wound his arms around her. Holding her so tightly, he could feel the beat of her mayfly heart. Iðunn’s apples had sentimental and spiritual value, were said even to be entheogenic. But they could not make her live forever. One day she would be gone from him, and he could not change that.

But Loki kept returning. He had done it twice already. Thor had no doubt he could go on doing so until Ragnarök itself came to remake the universe anew.

“It would not be good, for any one person to have control over all six of the infinity stones,” he murmured into her hair, finding there the soft scent of the soap Loki had given him. “Whether it is Loki or this Thanos, I cannot allow it.”

“But you’re letting him use you to find them,” she replied, low voice muffled by his tunic, and he gently wound his fingers through her hair, soothed the skin beneath with the tips.

“It is not so simple as that.”

Drawing back, her face wore an expression that wavered between frustration and anger. “What if it is?”

“Jane.”

“This isn’t what you wanted. You only wanted to talk to him. To _let him go_.”

Somewhere in the distance, even on this unfamiliar world, brontide whispered across the horizon. “I cannot.” Thick and tough, the words could not be swallowed down. “Not now that I have him back.”

“But do you really have him back? Or is this just some game he’s playing with you?”

The agony of it had him turning his head; the uncertain press of her fingertips upon his cheek burned. And yet he looked back, found the faint shimmer of tears in her own eyes though the words she spoke were very even.

“I don’t want to be cruel. But Thor, this isn’t right at all and you know that. We should go back.”

“Where? Midgard?” He gave a humourless chuckle. “I cannot defend it against a creature that has all six of the infinity stones. And Asgard, if what you say is true, can hardly be better given my father may have known about Loki all along.”

“I don’t know that.”

Yet Thor believed that she did. He could not look at her, not when his mind was awash with the memory of Loki’s fingers carding through his hair, the gentle rise and fall of a lullaby that had fallen into the lazy time of his own heartbeat. This Loki was different again from the brother he had known, the enemy he had fought. But he was still Loki.

And he was always and ever Thor.

“I need to talk to him.”

“ _Thor_.”

“Please.”

The hands on his face dropped away, her face twisted in unhappy resignation. “Just…be careful, would you? If only this one time.”

“I will.”

Lying was always something Loki had been better at. Ducking in order to leave the cave, Thor did not have to look far to find him. It was easy enough to recognise his brother despite the heavy furs, the blue skin, the too long hair; there remained still something ineffably Loki about him. But then, during his earliest shape-shifting experiments, Thor had always known him. There had been for the longest time just _something_ to the stretch of a wing, the twitch of a long furred ear, the set-down of a paw, that had screamed of his little brother. Anonymity only came with long practise.

Then, it seemed, he had lost the ability to read Loki altogether.

But it was his brother standing next to Mánagarm now, his face thunderous. “Is something the matter?” Thor asked, and Loki glanced up with a dire expression he usually reserved for opponents in battle and library pages who couldn’t index sagas to his liking.

“Mánagarm.” He scowled deeper. “It’s a stupid name.”

Affronted, Thor had both his hands on his hips in a stance he’d favoured very much from toddlerhood onwards. “Excuse me?”

Loki pursed his lips. “Hlórriði.”

“His _name_ is Mánagarm.”

“Atli, perhaps?”

“Stop it.”

The warning in Thor’s rumble only made Loki’s smirk turn all the more devious. “Maybe I should just call it the big dumb oaf and be done with it, yes?”

Another voice rose from near the cave’s entrance; when they both turned, it was to see a heavily bundled Jane carefully picking her way across the pack snow. “What does it eat?”

“It’s very cold out here, Jane; we will bring breakfast to you, if you like.”

Somewhat to Thor’s surprise Jane proceeded to ignore him. “Rachel said they gave it all sorts of things at the zoo, but they couldn’t really work out what it preferred. It pretty much ate everything.”

“They are omnivorous and opportunistic.” Loki’s stroked hand light upon his great head. Amenable as Mánagarm seemed to the touch, Thor could feel him yearning towards him. Loki frowned. “They are also supremely adaptable. I do not believe they have any particular preference at all.”

Something about that hurt, and Thor couldn’t work out why. But then Mánagarm broke free from Loki, came loping over to him with something dangerously close to a grin. Without any true thought Thor caught him about the neck, using the momentum to roll the creature once, twice, three times. Mánagarm went easily with the motion, and when he had Thor pinned beneath him he rumbled with distinct pleasure, tongue slavering over his face. Thor couldn’t stop laughing even as he tried to lever the creature back off him. Though he hadn’t keep a specific hound of his own since he’d been an adolescent, he hadn’t realised how he’d missed the company.

By the time he’d managed to extract himself, Jane’s voice floated over to him. “…know much about these creatures, but from what Thor told me about the one other time he met one of them, they seem to have taken to each other really well.”

Loki threw the two of them a distinctly disgusted look. “While there is a physical law that says likes repel and opposites attract, in my experience the opposite holds true almost nearly as often.” Despite his expression, Thor could hear the thoughtfulness he often had when discussing matters of interest with other practitioners of seiðr. “But then that would be a much truer trend towards equilibrium, would it not? Although then one might call it evidence that the world moves always towards chaos, in the end.”

Jane raised an eyebrow. “You kind of seem to get on with him well enough too, actually.”

Loki only blinked once. “I’ve always had too much of a soft spot for big dumb beasts, as it were.”

“Thank you, Loki,” Thor said dryly, and Loki bared his teeth at him.

“As always you are so very welcome, brother.”

Thor let it go, though not out of any real desire not to engage his younger sibling in an argument. It was more that he hadn’t used that particular endearment himself towards Loki since his imprisonment. It sat ill and unspoken upon his tongue, even now. Shifting closer to Mánagarm again, Thor rubbed his hand over the snout, and noted how he particularly enjoyed that. The rumbling in his belly grew ever louder, and Jane tilted her head.

“Is that for communication?”

“Yes. It also has something to do with electrical field generation.”

“What?” Thor said, startled into interest. Loki still had most of his attention focused upon Jane.

“That is probably the true reason why it finds Thor such a pleasing companion,” he observed. When Loki then passed a hand over the snout, Mánagarm leaned into it, though it was clear he did not finding it as pleasing as he had been when Thor had done it. “There are structures throughout the skull that allow these creatures to sense electrical impulses. It allows them to navigate in white-out conditions, as well as to detect one another and their prey.”

“And Thor’s totally an electrochemical storm,” Jane said quietly, though those crimson eyes were fixed upon Thor now.

“Indeed.”

“Are the actual Jötnar like that, too?”

Now Loki stared at Jane. Something very uncomfortable passed between them, and Thor was on the verge of attempting to diffuse it when Loki snorted, dropped his gaze.

“Certainly it is a sense we share with the ice beasts.” Though he spoke in a manner entirely pleasant, Thor recognised the fraying edges of his temper even before he turned a scowl on him. “So, are you quite finished rolling in the snow with your little monster, Thor? We should feed your tiny mortal before she blows away with the west winds.”

The odd breakfast provided proved tasty enough. In Thor’s experience Loki had never been a good cook, exactly, but his perfectionist nature meant he could master any skill he turned his hand to, should he want it enough. Only when the meal had tapered off into cups of thick tea for Jane and Thor, something colder for Loki, did Thor dare broach any more inflammatory topic than the weather outside.

“So, Loki – you are trying to locate the other infinity stones?”

“Three are accounted for – the aether and the tesseract are in Asgard.” He said this with watchful care, as if trying to catch Thor in a lie. “They are the power and mind stones, respectively. I have myself Sullt and Hungr, which together make the soul stone.”

“That leaves the space, time, and reality stones.”

“Very good. I am pleased to hear you listened to mother’s stories.”

Thor gave a snort at Loki’s easy patronising. “Why wouldn’t I? Filled with monsters and heroes and beautiful maidens. What was there not to enjoy?”

“Magical artefacts, it seems,” he said, sour with it, and Thor ignored the tone in favour of pressing forever forward.

“Do you know where they are?”

“I cannot even be certain _what_ they are.” His frustration showed clear now, the manner in which he put his cup aside just a little too violent. “They take various forms, after all. But I do have my suspicions, and I had been on the verge of investigating a certain lead when you came here.” Now he smiled. “Your presence will make it much easier.”

Thor only just checked an eyeroll. “Where do you wish to go?”

“Vanaheimr.”

It had not been his first suspicion. “ _Vanaheimr_?”

“Oh, come, Thor, think on it,” he snapped, leaning back so he might again stretch his legs; Thor moved slightly, having been victim to a sharp kick from Loki one too many times in his life. “Surely you have been involved, no matter how peripherally, with the reconstruction of the Bifröst you pounded to dust with that hammer of yours.”

_Because of what you did to it_ , but Thor kept that thought to himself. “I had some involvement, yes.”

“And from whence came the völur who gave the Allfather their council?”

“Vanaheimr.” Sudden suspicion burned with the words in his throat, like stomach acid rising after too rich a meal. “How did you know that?”

Loki gave him a look that Thor hadn’t seen since he’d failed ancient runes for the third time. “Some of us listened at their lessons.”

The spasm in his fingers now reminded him of how pleasant it had felt, to close them about Loki’s exposed throat. Only through clenched teeth was he able to say with admirable equanimity, “Yes, Freyja and her völur aided us. But what has that to do with infinity stones?”

“This knowledge they have, of how to cross such great distances – while they have lost the source of it, I do not doubt what it was.”

He couldn’t deny the sudden sizzle of excitement that went through him; treasure hunts had always been one of his favourite stories as a child. “The space stone.”

“Indeed,” he said, and actually managed a smile to match. Thor, on the other hand, let his brow furrow with the next thought.

“But if they’ve lost it—”

“I believe there may yet be clues that could tell us where it might be found.” Raising an eyebrow, he asked, “So, then, shall you accompany me on my next little adventure?”

“I will. Jane, you may return—”

“No.” The word came in perfect synchronicity from the both of them; both immediately turned to glare at one another, Loki irritated where Jane seemed more perplexed. Loki broke off first, though Thor was very much used to Loki’s garden variety death stares.

“No,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument, “she will come.”

As much as he could never deny her previous work or the gift of her friendship, Thor shook his head. “Why?”

“We have need of her.”

The growl that escaped his throat had Jane wincing, though Loki was unmoved. “She is a _person_ , and not a thing.”

“She would be very little use to either of us otherwise.”

For a long moment, no-one said anything. Then Jane started to shake her head. “Maybe you’re not Loki of Asgard like that, but you’re still Loki. What if someone recognises you?”

“I will come not as myself, but as another.”

There was very little flash and dazzle to it – but then, for all Loki knew how to put on a show when he felt the need, he also understood the fine art of subtlety better than most. As it turned out the true surprise of the action was the nature of the shape he had shifted to. Something of his original Jötunn form could be made out, but the softening of his features and the swell of hip gave him a similarity to Angrboða that had Thor’s mouth drying up. Again, the urge to ask rose strong in him. But he could only stare.

“I thought you couldn’t use your magic,” Jane said, soft, and Loki rolled his eyes even as he added a little twirl for drama’s sake.

“This is one of those _inherent abilities_ I mentioned.”

“What, changing gender’s a Jötunn thing?”

“You may call me Járnsaxa.” A moment later, his expression soured. “Although I suspect Hogun will see right through it. But not to worry. He has always known how to keep his mouth shut, when the situation calls for it.”

“I…” Jane’s eyes had rounded to a state that might have been comical in any other circumstance. “…you are a _woman_.”

“Not quite. But near enough.” His smile held no humour whatsoever. “Things are somewhat more complicated than that, amongst we Jötnar.”

“Are all females smaller, then?” she asked, the inevitability of her inquisitive nature breaking loose again. Thor’s hand had tightened on her shoulder, but she was too busy flicking her eyes over his new body to pay much attention to how frigid even those bright crimson eyes could turn.

“No.” The word was very cold. “And we are not having this conversation.”

“Loki—”

“Are we going to Vanaheimr or not?”

The deathly quiet between them held for just a moment too long. Then Jane threw up her hands, reaching for her satchel. As she began to sift through its contents, she scowled.

“Look, I can probably calibrate for Vanaheimr pretty quickly,” she said, pulling out a tattered piece of paper loaded with her small neat handwriting. Pushing her hand over her hair, she frowned deeper yet. “I think I’ve got the hang of this, and I can calculate the co-ordinates from the map Heimdall drew me. Thing is, if we go to Vanaheimr with my portals, we can’t go anywhere else by that route. When we step through the portal, we leave the generators behind. We’ll have to go back and pick up the other set from home, first.”

Seated on the cushioned floor, she looked up at them both with pointed question. Loki grinned, gave a lovely little drawl. “Oh, I do miss Midgard so.”

The warning look Thor gave him had all the force of a blow to the solar plexus. “It will be a very brief visit.”

Loki didn’t even bother pretending to smile, just showed his teeth instead. “As it always should have been.”

Thor had no time to puzzle over his brother’s meaning now. In retrospect, however, he suspected he probably ought to have.

 

*****

 

When Jane asked where it was they should go, Thor directed her not to the heart of the city where the court of the Vanir king resided. Rather, when they emerged from the portal it was to find themselves in the high fields above the small village where Hogun lived with his wife. Ignoring the muttered commentary Loki provided about the crude nature of Jane’s portals – which he had already had enough of the first time around – Thor disrupted its weave and then took her by the hand. “Welcome to Vanaheimr.”

The greenness of it, warm with the afternoon sunlight, appeared to dazzle her after the bleak wasteland that had been Jötunheimr. “It’s…like being in Switzerland, or something.”

“Only this far inland,” he said, pleased by her wonderment. Only when he turned to Loki did his smile fade. “Are you coming?”

“Wasn’t this _my_ idea?” But he kept any further sour thoughts to himself as they slid down the embankment to a rutted road below, and turned their attention to the valley. It would be an hour’s walk, maybe two, to the village itself.

“Who wants to fly?” Thor asked as he unhooked Mjölnir from his belt. Jane groaned like she had been taken suddenly and violently ill.

“Oh, _god_.”

“Are you afraid of a little stroll, brother?” Loki asked with blank disinterest, but he couldn’t fool Jane; her head snapped up and she stared like he’d grown another head.

“What, you don’t like flying with that thing either?”

Startled, Loki turned his attention to her but for once had nothing to say. The distraction was enough for Thor to hook his arm about Jane’s waist, holding her tight against his side. Even as she squirmed and called him some series of names that might impress even Sif, he cocked an eyebrow at Loki.

“I’ve only got the one arm free, and Jane called it first. You’d better hold on tight if you don’t want to be left behind.”

It seemed for a moment Loki might actually force them all to walk – for he surely realised that Thor would not permit him to roam alone through the Vanir countryside. And then with an explosive grumble he ducked under the arm holding Mjölnir, arms coming tight about waist and shoulder.

“Do remember that I can give you frostbite in some very uncomfortable places if you even think of pulling some idiot-brained trick up there.”

“Oh, no, tricks are far more your forte than mine.” And without thinking too much about how neither Jane nor Loki were likely to be enjoying their close acquaintance, Thor gave Mjölnir a mighty spin and shot off into the sky.

When they landed, Jane clung to him in the fashion of a barnacle though Loki staggered away as if he’d quite forgotten what solid ground even felt like. The commotion was enough to draw a figure from the nearest circular building, half-set into the earth; dressed in the simple garb of a farmer, with eyes startled and wide, Hogun looked so utterly different from his usual form of stoic warrior that for a moment he appeared another person altogether.

“Thor!” Almost at once he regained his composure, though anyone who knew him well would have caught the second, far more subtle widening of his eyes as he looked over those who accompanied him: one mortal, one frost giant.

Before any questions could be asked or introductions attempted, Thor strode forward and grasped Hogun’s hand in easy greeting. “I am sorry, my friend, to come upon you so unexpectedly.” Though Hogun returned the gesture with his usual grim amiability, Thor kept his tone purposefully humble. “But we have business here, and would request your help if you might offer it.”

The sharp eyes had moved again to Loki. “So I see,” he observed. “Have you been to Jötunheimr, then?”

“Yes.”

“And brought a piece of it back with you.”

Much as Thor realised that Hogun spoke of Loki, he could not help but think of Mánagarm, left behind again. “He will be fine,” Loki had said with scalding impatience. Yet he’d been loathe to leave him, passing his hands over the creature’s mandibles and the surprisingly soft skin of his snout more than was necessary for any goodbye.

It hadn’t helped that he’d remembered Loki’s words, and had been unable to resist loosing a brief flicker of storm. Mánagarm had stiffened, and Thor had snatched his hand back, horrified at the thought of causing him pain. And yet, within moments, the rumbling noise of pleasure had grown even louder. As the great beast had leaned in closer still Thor had felt an odd warmth swelling beneath the chill of his skin.

“If you are quite finished, Thor?”

Loki had come too close. The urge Thor had felt then almost had him pressing his hand to jaw and throat, sending that same pulse through the Jötunn skin of his brother. All he wanted in that moment was to see if Loki might make that same sound, might curve into him now as he once had when he had worn the face and skin of an Asgardian.

And now it was Loki who called him back from his reverie, sharp and harsh enough with it as he hissed into his ear, having drawn him aside, “What is with the dreaming? We have work to do.”

Thor blinked over at him, though his voice was cold. “It is never so easy to end things.”

“Don’t try your hand at poetry, Thor. You’re no skald.”

“Perhaps you should watch your own tongue around your master, thrall.”

A flash of pure loathing crossed his face with the heat of a star’s ruined heart. “Oh, my lord, I know my place.” Swaying close, hips tilted in a way that reminded him all too well of the easy sensuality of Angrboða, Loki slithered his face close, tongue light upon his upper lip. “So shall I get down on my knees here and now, or would you prefer to have a bench of some kind to bend me over?”

Catching his wrists in his hands, Thor stepped back, clenched hard enough to bruise enough that thick skin. “Enough.”

“But it never is.” For all the light amusement of the words Loki was not smiling when Thor let him go. They broke the stare and turned almost as one. Hogun’s attention had fixed upon on them; it was clear he had not heard the argument, but he had known them both for years. It could be no surprise that when they were led into the cool dimness of his home that he turned to the creature they’d named Járnsaxa and shook his head, dark eyes as always seeing directly to the heart of things.

“Loki.”

The brilliance of his smile turned a lovely creature into something downright extraordinary. “Hello, Hogun. I knew you’d recognise me, no matter how pretty I’ve become.”

“I knew your death to be too easy.”

One hand flew to his throat, and he half-staggered; if not for the caw of laughter than accompanied the motion, one might have believed Loki genuinely hurt. “You believe that was _easy_?”

Thrusting out an arm, Thor caught Loki about one shoulder and shoved him upright. “We should not have this argument,” he said, flat and without once looking his way. Loki only snorted, thrust his arm aside.

“Why not?”

“We are guests here.”

That had him laughing again, actually doubling over in his mirth. “Oh, _honestly_ , Thor!”

Hogun always had had a particular ability to dismiss Loki’s antics as below his notice, no matter how overwrought such actions could become. His face was as stone when he crossed his arms over his chest. “What brings you here, Loki?”

“We would speak with Freyja, possibly her father. That brother of hers would be all but useless. Freyja and I always had that in common.”

Rolling his eyes, Thor leaned back against one of the support struts of the building. Still, he had to be glad that Loki had simply cut to the chase. “We are seeking a legend.”

“What legend is that?”

“The infinity stones. Specifically, the space stone.”

“I see.” Hogun’s expression had turned lightly thoughtful. “We shall have to go to court.”

“Indeed we shall.” Examining his dark nails with insouciant care, Loki added, “Which is why we have come to you. We shall need some more appropriate clothing, as we haven’t had the time to go on home. Although I understand most of my things likely went up in flames long ago.”

“Which is what happens when you let your family think you dead.”

Loki rolled his eyes skyward. “Must we do this again? I’m not sure an indoor rage storm is going to be a polite way to extend your thanks to our dear host.”

Yet said host seemed utterly unmoved by the fraternal spat. Thor might have loved him for it, had it not been one of Hogun’s most useful talents from the first time they had met. “You will never get the information you wish as you are,” Hogun noted, and Loki snorted.

“And so I shall not ask for it.” One hand rose, pointed with an almost accusing note. “ _She_ will.”

Jane started. Thor felt his heart tighten. “Loki.”

“That is why she is here. She is, after all, the mortal who is known to be seeking ways and means of creating her own analogue of the Bifröst. Why should you not bring her to Freyja to ask her questions?”

Jane’s eyes jumped between the brothers, somewhere between disbelieving and irritated. “Thanks for the heads up – I don’t even know what to ask!”

“It will not be an issue, I can tell you what I need to know. And I will be present. Just…in a slightly different capacity.”

“And what does _that_ mean?”

One long-fingered hand adjusted the fall of the furs about his shoulders. “Not to worry, Dr. Foster. It won’t seem at all odd. His family has rather a reputation for keeping exotics as bedmates.” And then he chuckled. “As does hers, come to think of it.”

“Thor, translate for your brother, would you?”

The uncomfortable shift of his weight from one foot to another was enough to brand him guilty in her eyes. “I believe he intends to spread the tale that Járnsaxa is…a Jötunn thrall.”

“What the hell is a thrall?”

“Any number of things.” Sparing nothing of his mocking grin, Loki leaned back against the nearest wall and crossed one long leg over the other. “But I think we shall say that I was _so_ very grateful for his assistance in removing me from bondage to a cruel master that I quite refuse to leave his side, even though it’s clear he gets the same from you without actual payment.”

The brick red flush that rose from her neck all the way to her hairline was just as furious as was humiliated. For his own part, Thor only just resisted the urge to reach over and throttle him. Instead he turned, gave her a tight smile.

“Jane, I think I would like to introduce you to Vanaheimr. Shall we?” Even as he firmly took her hand upon his elbow, he turned a frigid glare upon his brother. “Loki, on the other hand, might do best to remain here, and decide what information he will need you to seek out for him from Freyja.”

Loki’s smile had turned lazy, predatory. “Are you so sure you should leave me to my own devices?”

“I am sure that Gróa could find something for you to do. We will be preparing a feast for the prince.” Hogun now stood before Loki, unmoving. “And you will play your role as his thrall quite well in the kitchen.”

Leaning forward, Loki purred the words in that voice that was just a shade higher than his natural register. “Oh, you are so _very_ forceful, Hogun. I always did love that about you. That _endless_ rigidity.”

Thor only rolled his eyes and stood with clear command. “Come, then. Let’s just get this started.”

 

*****

 

Everything about this idiot plan could have led to complete disaster. And yet Loki had fallen into the role of Járnsaxa with an ease that was frankly terrifying. Even knowing as he did from long experience Loki’s ability to lie, Thor found the act Loki threw himself into now to be far too believable. He walked with downcast eyes, spoke and moved with a subservient attitude, but when a woman with a baby had ventured past, he had started speaking of herbs and potions with a striking animation. Despite inbred prejudice, the village women had found themselves curious to speak with the half-breed Jötunn thrall on matters of first midwifery before then ranging beyond into deeper matters of alchemy and medicine.

Jane remained at his side, still with her satchel slung secure over her shoulder. “If I hadn’t been scared of him before, I would be now,” she said, soft, and he turned to her with a troubled frown.

“Why is that?”

“The way he changes.” The women ranged about Loki broke into sudden laughter; Jane didn’t bother to hide her wince, nor the way her fingers tightened on the strap. “Not that he’s ever exactly been _nice_ to me, but how can you ever tell when he’s being honest?”

“You can’t,” he replied, soft, and she turned to him with eyes both fearful and hard.

“Thor.”

His head moved in but the briefest shake. “You just have to believe.”

One of the women had raised Loki’s left hand, tracing the patterns raised on its back with candid examination; in turn Loki appeared to be explaining something about the meaning of their twist and curve. Thor had never quite dared to do the same. His gut did a lazy roll even as Jane rubbed the bend of her wrist over first one eye, then the other, and then let it fall to her side with tired regret. “But what’s belief without trust?” she asked, and he pressed his lips tight together.

_Hope_. “Come,” he said instead, folding his fingers about hers. “We should walk a while, you and I. He will not be able to cause too much mischief here now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Notice I said _too much_ rather than _none_.” The faint smile was no less genuine than one of its brighter cousins might have been. “While I do not doubt he has more reasons than the one for wishing to come to Vanaheimr, short of raising an army of babies I am not certain what nefarious plans he might otherwise enact with pregnant women and their most recent offspring.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him to think of _something_ ,” she huffed, but she’d managed a tiny smile of her own. Her fingers lay very warm in the cradle of his own. “But a walk would be nice.”

Indeed it was; as on Midgard, Vanaheimr was in the process of crawling from the dregs of winter into the chill sun of coming spring, and the air kept warming by degrees with the coming of midday. Yet this was just how it was in the low foothills; they would have to go down to the more tropical coast to reach the royal city of Nóatún. He’d said as much to her earlier, had hoped to see her excited at the opportunity to discover Vanir technology for herself, but the longer they moved the more withdrawn she became.

By the time the sun passed the meridian they had climbed some distance back up towards the high meadows, finding various grazing beasts about their afternoons. Thor raised his arm in greeting to the three young goatherds he saw, then helped a goosegirl chase three of her wayward charges from the pond they had decided to claim for a nap. They later came to halt on a meandering lane, Jane leaning upon a latched gate to look over the sloping fields with wordless interest. Thor came to stand at her side, one boot hooked up on the wood. In the distance two goats slept in the lengthening light, curled about one another like kittens. He was vaguely considering telling her some fool story about the twin goats he’d kept as a child, when she gave a sudden sigh.

“I’m worried about this talking to Freyja thing.”

Of all the things Jane might have said, this he had not expected; if there had been one certainty that had always seemed immutable about the mortal astrophysicist, it was her faith in her science.

_But then, you changed that. You left her. And it shook those foundations to their very core._

Splinters dug beneath his nails, but he could not loosen his grip on the rude wood of the beam. “Do not be,” he said, the forced lightness a skill learned true in the days since Loki’s fall. “She keeps a merry court, in comparison to what you have seen in Asgard. It is much more informal.”

“It’s not that.” High in the hills, there always seemed to be a breeze; it lifted the hair from her neck like a caress, let it banner behind her like a sparrow’s wing. “I mean, I can make stuff up if I have to, but this thing with the infinity stones is just a _bit_ outside my experience. I think she’s going to see right through me. Or else I’m not going to be able to work out what information you guys even need from her.”

“Járnsaxa will be there to guide you, if necessary.”

Jane gave him a _look_ that made her appear uncomfortably close to a cross between his mother wanting to slap his hand for stealing a honeycake and Sif taking offense at his going too easy on her. “Funnily enough, that doesn’t make it a lot better.” Then she half sighed, shaking her head as she did so. The glint in her eyes as she glanced about the fresh landscape reminded him of how the court painters had sought new subjects for the annual commissions of the queen. “But…this _is_ what I wanted.”

“Is it really?”

“Well, not entirely.” With her head laid against his shoulder, she gave a strange little laugh that made him think of the way broken porcelain could never be put back together without forever holding the memory of a fine web of cracks. “But I guess it could be a lot worse.”

The first stars were rising upon the horizon as they arrived back at the village. Already he was promising to ask Hogun to point out the most interesting of their constellations later that night, though he also pointed out wryly that the tales that went with them would probably be better told by another.

“I like the way you explain things, remember?” she pointed out. With a grin he pressed his lips lightly to hers, and let Gróa escort her away to dress. Loki himself was nowhere in sight, though Hogun appeared a moment after his wife and Jane had disappeared.

“Járnsaxa has endeared herself to many.”

“Some might say she has a silver tongue,” Thor replied, reckless, and Hogun’s expression remained as grim as it had always been named.

“You must be wary.”

“That’s never been a strength of mine.”

Hogun’s gaze had never been the type to go easy on anyone. “Then borrow it from others who would give it to you.”

Thor took the moments before dinner to make himself more presentable, though the meal would hardly be as formal as one taken at court. But much of the village had gathered in the square, low tables and cushions brought from home and arranged in linking circles. By the time Thor and Hogun arrived, bearing various meats thrust upon them by women and children in the kitchens they passed by, the space thronged with people; Thor moved easily amongst the peals of laughter and the merry jig of a violin at duel with a flute.

 Gróa had seated Jane beside her; on her other side a place remained that had clearly been intended for Thor, given that beside the empty space sat Loki in fine form as the lovely Járnsaxa. Despite the proximity to Jane he paid her little heed, deep in conversation with the gathered völur about him. He had obviously been given opportunity, too, to change. The long hair had been gathered upon his head in a series of braids like a crown, the remainder allowed to spill about his slender shoulders like a waterfall. Combined with the light Vanir gown he wore, he bore an eerie resemblance to Frigga that stopped Thor dead in his tracks.

A moment later Gróa was lifting the linen-draped boar and its platter from his hands, showing no reaction at all to its great weight. “You men always say that we women take too much time before our mirrors, yet you are the ones who are late.” She extended one arm, the platter balanced effortlessly beneath the platter, and indicated where a group of men had gathered before a pyramidal construction of barrels. “Go, fill yourself a flagon and come entertain us with stories of your adventures. You must prove yourself good for _something_ , no?”

With a grin only half as carefree as it looked, Thor sketched Gróa a little bow and did as she asked. The ale proved rich and fortified, and the mead that was passed around with dessert had the iron-sweet tang that spoke of Kvasir’s finest vintage. Yet despite the pleasant buzz of his mind, and the easy warmth of Jane pressed against his side, his thoughts never quite relaxed. Not with Loki playing at Járnsaxa, flitting about the square with an obliging easiness that had more than one man eyeing the lean body with speculative design.

The stars had shifted noticeably in the sky when Gróa leaned over his shoulder, dark eyes almost black in the dim light of the bonfire. “We have prepared chambers for you, when you are ready to take your leave.”

“Thank you, Gróa.” Already he was rising, gentling Jane upwards with him; fortunately she had found more interest in the conversation and the constellations than in the liquor, which suspected could be somewhat too potent for the mortal metabolism. “Jane, would you care to retire? We will be up with the sun, come the morning.”

“Sure.” For the first time noticed that Loki stood silent at Gróa’s side, though his smile flickered in and out with the dancing shadows of the flames. Thor said nothing to him, allowed Jane to remain close by his side as they first did the rounds of goodbyes, and then with the addition of Hogun made their way towards a small cluster of buildings that served as guesthouses for any visitors to the village. Gróa halted before one, withdrawing a key from the thick cloak she had drawn over her gown.

“These are the chambers for Dr. Foster.” Another key, and she pointed to a building perhaps twenty feet to the southwest. “That one has been prepared for you and your thrall.”

Jane’s flickering eyes spoke of a breaking storm only just withheld. With his own most princely smile held in firm place, Thor patted Hogun on one shoulder, nodded to his wife. “We thank you most deeply for your hospitality, old friend,” he said with game pleasure, and then turned to where Loki watched with barely concealed mirth in his crimson gaze. “Járnsaxa, will you step inside? I will be with you shortly.”

Only those who knew Loki well could have caught the light mocking tilt of so low a bow.  “Of course, my lord.”

Only after thanking Gróa and Hogun again did Thor indicate the door; Jane smiled her own thanks, but the moment they were alone she whirled about, hands on her hips and eyes ablaze. “What the hell is _that_ all about?”

One hand rose, tugged upon his ear as he winced. “Járnsaxa is a thrall. For that, Loki must either stay with me, or be housed with the other servants. And that, I am sure, we cannot allow.”

For a long moment she said nothing, only stared at him as if they had never even met before. And then she threw her hands upward, turning as she began to unwind the silks Gróa had placed about her shoulders and throat. “All right. Sure. Whatever.”

“Jane.”

She paused, hands at the clips in her hair. Then she sighed and let them fall as she turned back to him. “It’s fine. It’s just…weird, okay? Because _I_ know that he’s your brother, but everyone else thinks…” Her hands rose again, the fingers almost clawing at the air in her inability to articulate the thoughts and actions that sat so ill at ease in her mind. “…yeah.”

His throat had taken on the dryness of a Múspellsheimr desert. “Not all thralls provide such service, Jane.”

“But I’m pretty sure Loki’s not going to disabuse them of the notion,” she with arch knowledge, fingers digging too deep into the fine silks. “God, I know you love him, but he can be such a _prick_.”

Very carefully Thor leaned forward, gently took the fabric from her hands. “I would not argue this,” he said softly, and then pressed a light kiss upon her lips. “I will see you in the morning.”

“Even then, it’s not just that,” she burst out. “I mean, a _slave_? Really, Thor? Is this a normal thing, around here? Because it hasn’t been normal on Earth since the Dark Ages.”

Much as he knew it was not her own personal fault, Thor could not keep the testiness from his tone; all too well he remembered an insult spit upon the wind: _…the humans slaughter each other in droves, while you idly fret!_ “I rather suspect you would find slaves on Midgard even now,” he said, and even as Jane opened her mouth to argue he raised a tired hand. “But no, it is not…entirely common. It is just that Jötnar have fallen low on the hierarchy of the realms since their failure to take Midgard. Generally they are not even permitted outside of Jötunheimr. Only those under the guardianship of one from another realm might be exempted from this rule.”

“If by _guardianship_ you mean _owned by_.”

“It is rare enough.” But any comfort he had hoped she might take in those words seemed ill-advised; in fact she began to pace, the fine silk of her slippers a fierce rustle against the carpeted floor.

“But not so much that anyone here is batting so much as an eyelid. And we’re kind of out in the sticks. What the hell’s it like in the cities?”

Any ease his mind might have taken from the drink he’d imbibed earlier in the evening had quite vanished. Thor rather felt instead that his eyes had swollen, and were now trying to break free of his skull. Rubbing at his temple, he frowned. “There have always been rumours, that my grandfather had a mistress who was at least part Jötunn. She may have been like Angrboða.” It sounded weak even to him when he added, “It would be seen as a familial weakness.”

“What, keeping a frost giant as some sort of prostitute just runs in the family for you guys?” Then she laughed, stopped dead. “Actually, no, that’s wrong – a prostitute would at least be getting _paid_ for that.”

“Jane.” Standing in front of her, he took her hands, found them very cold. “This is not how it is.”

“For Loki, maybe. But there are others out there that it _is_ true for, right? And there’s no-one here that gives a shit.”

“You do.”

She snorted, and for the first time he realised that she was actually upon the verge of tears. “Fat lot of good that does them.”

Cradling both of her hands in his own, he raised them to his lips, pressed them softly there. She looked nowhere else but to him, and in that he felt the dreadful power of what it meant to be who he truly was. “You remind me that though I am not king, I have sworn myself to the realms. To be a good man.” He closed his eyes, breathed in her scent like a prince making an oath to his queen. “And I think that you are right.”

“So you’re going to try and do something about it?”

He opened them again. “I must.”

The look in her eyes was searching, demanding. She appeared to be satisfied by whatever she saw there – but then she had no idea of the stories they had been told as children. Of how by all rights he should have taken one look at Loki in his Jötunn form and dashed his brains out against the rocks, not even dirtying Mjölnir’s uru brilliance with the filth of a frost giant runt.

His heart felt to have been used as one of his mother’s pincushions. “Jane,” he said, and he let his hands fall light upon her shoulders. “I should not leave him alone too long.”

With a sigh, she pressed her hair back behind her ear and nodded. “Sure. I understand. Good night.”

Thor could not leave without ducking his head, pressing another light kiss to her lips. Though Jane returned it willingly enough, unease followed him like a cackling shadow back to his own shared quarters, chill as the night time air. Loki was not in the receiving room, but when Thor pressed through the dividing curtain he found his brother still in the form of Járnsaxa. Seated on a cushion before a low mirror, the lamps at low burn, he brushed out his long hair with slow and careful strokes.

“Oh dear,” he said, nonchalant as the riptide that could pull one down to drown, “I do believe she was jealous.”

Thor sat heavily upon a cushion of his own, stretching out a foot somewhat too violently for the mere task of removing his boot. “There is no need for this.”

Loki snorted, turning his attention back to the lovely reflection of the glass. “But it hurts _my_ feelings if all the Vanir believe I’ve offered myself to the Prince of Asgard and you haven’t taken me in my turn.”

“Stop it.”

Loki rolled his eyes, but said nothing more as he instead set about braiding his hair for sleep. They did not speak of the fact the rooms held only one low bed, though there was a conversation pit loaded with thick pillows in the foyer beyond the bedchamber. Loki simply threw himself down upon the wool-stuffed mattress, making no motion to pull the furs over himself. Thor, on the other hand, burrowed beneath them in wordless motion. Spring would soon enough become summer, but in the high foothills Vanaheimr’s nights held a deep cool.

And he slept next to a frost giant.

“Loki.”

The body beside his own shifted, but made no sign of any reply. Only when Thor rolled over, gave him an experimental poke in the forehead, did Loki slap his hand away with a snarl.

“ _What_?”

“You brought Laufey into Asgard.”

Though Loki had hardly been moving beforehand, the name seemed to have the power of a whispered spell; his younger brother’s body could have been made of ancient immutable stone, if not for the low whisper of his reply. Or the glitter of his crimson eyes.

“I did.”

When Thor went to speak again, his throat had tightened to the point his voice shivered so very close to the register it had been in their shared childhood. “Did he know?”

In that stillness, Thor thought Loki would rise – or at the very least, turn his back. But he only lay very still, unblinking and expressionless. “That will always be unknown now,” he murmured, voice smooth as set glass, “but I believe he had his suspicions.”

“But didn’t you want to tell him?” His own hands tightened to fists beneath the bedclothes. “To ask him?”

“Why?” Loki sounded genuinely curious, for all his voice held a flat distance that Thor could not believe wasn’t feigned. “He left me for dead once. Why give him the opportunity to do so twice?”

“If you truly believed that, then why could you not also believe that Father would have saved you again? If you had only asked?”

Even in the dark his eyes shone very bright – yet they held the hint of venous blood, thick and dark, and not the arterial brilliance of the day. His chest scarcely seemed to move with every breath he took, yet Thor could feel the tremor of it passing over his skin, the stubble of his beard. The intimacy of it, of lying beside one another, little more than whispers in the dark: they might have been children, again.

_But we will never be children again_.

“Why are we speaking of this now?” he asked, deep tiredness in his tone. And Thor, in such darkness, had only honesty to offer.

“Because I never know when you will go away again.”

“I am here now.”

Thor’s smile was a faultline. “But for how long?”

“What does it matter?” And when Loki laughed, it was as if his heart had ruptured, giving over to the chaos of earthshock. “The Norns always bring us together again. I do not think I might ever escape you.”

And in the silence that followed, he said nothing more. He only stared. Thor swallowed very hard, and wondered what he had done.

_But then, what has **he** done?_

“Good night, Loki.”

And when his brother made no reply Thor rolled over and closed his eyes. He might be chasing sleep for a while this night, but he still had every intention of catching it.


	9. 2.3: Distancing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for the delay in updating; I hadn't actually meant it to go on this long, but aside from various dramas IRL, my brain decided to be exceptionally uncooperative about doing much more than planning this fic. The good news is that this means I've got entire chapters sketched out; the bad news is that the actual filling in of the skeletal structure is proving harder than first imagined. So, really, I am sorry if this chapter's a little stilted because of my brainfades. Otherwise, thank you always for reading along. <3

They took breakfast together in the antechamber of Thor and Loki’s shared room, seated upon furs before a low table. Though usually possessed of an appetite that would put most trolls to shame, Thor did not partake in much of the offered feast. And yet Loki, who had more often only picked at his meals, tucked in with a gusto that seemed to disturb Jane as well as Thor himself. It likely had something to do with how she eventually sat back from the table, a warm cup of broth held firm in her hands.

“So, how is this going to work?”

Fiddling absently with a piece of well-cooked flatbread, dipping it many times more than necessary into the petal-like arrangement of condiments on the plate next to it, Thor let his thoughts carve deep lines into his face. “We will be going to Hogun’s family mansion in the city of Nóatún later this morning.” Finally setting the bread down uneaten, he indicated the door through which Gróa had earlier departed after serving their meal. “He is announcing our intentions to the palace now.”

Jane took a sip from the delicate bowl, frowned. “How?”

“ _Magic_ , child.”

Thor barely resisted the urge to elbow his brother in the gut; not even centuries of Frigga’s conditioning had ever entirely broken him of the habit. “ _Loki_ ,” he admonished. Then he ignored the fact that Loki only rolled his eyes and promptly went back to stuffing his face with what looked to be an uncomfortable amount of fruit. Instead Thor inclined himself more fully towards Jane, his own stomach a mostly-empty bundle of tangled knots. “We have modes of long distance communication not unlike your telephonic devices.”

Her eyes brightened. “Can I see one?”

“Later, perhaps.” The unintended curtness of the reply darkened her eyes; the hurt behind the surprise left him with a sharp tug of guilt. “Though I must warn you, the city will be…busy,” he added, his smile an apology on more than one count. Jane’s eyebrows only drew together in sharpened confusion.

“Why?”

“The coming of spring.” Given she looked no more enlightened than before, Thor elaborated with only the vague: “It is a fertility rite.”

Loki snorted, fingers questing deep in a warm basket of bread. “Though of course this is the Vanir. _Everything_ is fertility with them.” Raising his other hand, he wriggled the fingers in a gesture that shouldn’t have been obscene and yet somehow was. “Spring, when it begins. Summer, when it ripens. Autumn, when it harvests. Winter, when it slumbers in wait.” And now he laughed, gave Thor an arch look. “They just have an urge to stick a cock in any willing hole and call it done. Or the nearest closest alternative. They’re not terribly fussy about these things, if we’re to be honest about it.”

“ _Thank_ you, Járnsaxa.”

“Always willing to be of service, my lord.” One long hand moved to pat his abdomen, deceptively flat despite the granary of food he seemed determined to conceal within it. Then the smile turned deadly, like a single-edged blade flipped to reveal its sharpness. “Why else do you think these people will speak with a Jötunn thrall? We mindless beasts have _quite_ the reputation for our creative rutting, and then we just reproduce like rabbits to match. It’s only that most base of survival instincts that’s kept us alive quite so long without the Casket of Ancient Winters.” Both hands slammed down upon the table. Jane couldn’t hide her flinch, but Loki only levered himself upward with the sunniest of smiles, dipped a bow just low enough to be taunting. “If you’ll excuse me, then?”

Abrupt end to his gorging or no, Loki looked nothing but elegant as he drew his cloak about him and swept through the door. On the other hand Jane appeared quite shell-shocked, eyes as startled as any deer caught in the sights of a hunter. And then she shook her head, reached again for her cup. “I know he’s your brother, but…” The long sip she took could not delay her sigh for long. “…do you _ever_ know exactly what’s going through that head of his?”

“No.” Reaching over, Thor laid his hand upon hers, loosely laced their fingers. “But do not be too concerned with his words. Though I am sure he would regale you with lurid tales of orgies and dark magics, the festivals are hardly so sinister nor so sordid.”

“The joys of interdimensional travel, I guess.” And yet for all her smile, her hand slowly withdrew from his, expression troubled. “…you’re going to hate me for this.”

“I could never hate you, Jane,” he returned, surprised. Her unhappiness only grew.

“Things change.” Fingers spasmed upon the table, eyes fixed upon the barely-touched plate of breakfast. He could see her shoulders squaring, the breath she took to fortify herself before she looked up again, met his eyes with even purpose. “He tried to take over Midgard.”

“He did,” he said, cautious and flat. Jane grimaced.

“He also tried to kill your friends. He _did_ kill Phil Coulson. I can’t even remember the exact number of people who died in New York. And then he tried to kill _you_.”

“He did,” Thor repeated in the same tone that brooked no denial, and Jane pushed back from the table with an exasperated sigh. Thor only watched as she began an arrhythmic pace, hands shoved back through her hair. Then she paused, whirled on him with fierce demand.

“So why are you so willing to do this with him _now_? And I’m not even talking about Thanos. He could help you with all this from a prison cell.”

Thor had never been good with detachment, nor with the cool chill Loki could so easily bring to a conversation. One hand curled about a stirring rod, though it felt as insubstantial as air compared to the steady firm shaft of Mjölnir. “He could. Of course he could. But likely as not he just wouldn’t.”

To her credit Jane could clearly see how the conversation hurt him. And yet he could not deny that she also thought of the welfare of both his heart and his soul when she said, quiet, “But that’s still where he should be.”

Thor closed his eyes, felt the soft _snap_ of the rod. The press of her fingers fell light upon his clenched fist, her voice a simple study in despair.

“I told you that you’d hate me for this.”

He opened his eyes. “I don’t hate you.” The faint itch of blood pooled in the lines of his palm, warm and condemning. “But it does hurt.”

Thor rose from the table. But he did not go far. Though he settled himself somewhat beyond the small cluster of buildings where he might overlook the village centre below the curve of the hill, it was only a matter of moments before Jane came to join him. With tablet held in her hands, she stood hesitant at his side.

“Is it okay if I sit down?”

He looked up, gave her a crooked grin. “Of course. It was rude of me, to leave that way.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” he said, and let his eyes move back again to the village life spread out before them like a child’s toy. “No, I am sorry.”

Jane paused, then ventured quietly, “Because it’s true? What I said?”

“The Norns always did bless me with companions who never hesitate to tell me the most of uncomfortable of truths.” Only now did he look to her, feeling the flake of dried blood as his hand clenched again to loose fist. “But I did make him a promise.”

The despair of her expression had all the force of a kick to the groin. “Oh, god,” she whispered upon a sigh. “You told him that if he helped you with the whole Malekith thing, you’d let him go free?”

“Yes.” His mouth felt very dry, peculiar. “And he did not break that promise.”

The pity in her eyes made his stomach turn. “He let you think he was _dead_.”

“For a logical reason.”

“Only if you believe what he says.”

“Jane.” As he looked into his eyes, he no longer knew who he was trying to convince. “I have known him for a thousand years.”

“People change,” she said, and the hint of pleading to the tone coiled about his throat like a noose. And yet he could not stop speaking.

“I told him once that I did not believe my brother still existed within the mask of monster he’d pulled over his head, so tightly bound to his skin it became the truth instead of only a lie.” His fingers dropped, kneaded into the soil beneath him. “I was wrong.”

“Thor.”

He could not look at her now. “Jane, please.”

Though Thor did turn again, her fear was a tangible taste upon the air between them: iron and salt and copper. “I just…can you promise me something? Or if you can’t promise me, promise…I don’t know. The Nine Realms, I guess.”

The weight of kingship had never felt so heavy upon his shoulders. “What is it you need of me?”

“If he snaps. If he tries to destroy us all.” In that pause, the realms entire seemed to hold a collective breath. “Please. _Stop him_. No matter what. Just…stop him.”

“Sometimes, Jane,” he said, very soft, “that is what I believe I was born for.”

After that, there could be nothing more to say. The life of the village continued to bustle about below them. A faint hint of blue in the distance caught his attention; Loki stood again with a group of women, head bowed, the long braid of dark hair fallen forward over the curve of a shoulder. Even at this distance, the ease of his laughter carried to Thor like a skater over the thinnest of ice.

Jane shifted at his side, leaning her elbows on her knees; when he glanced over he saw that she looked determinedly forward, lips pursed in furious thought. “So what exactly am I talking to Freyja about? Because sure, I can talk to her until the cows come home about my theories on how to build wormholes, but if you’re wanting something specific about what was used to build the Bifröst, then I’m going to need some serious specifics of my own.”

He could not help the fond half-smile, nor curb the urge to reach over and push a loose sheaf of hair behind one ear. “Considering the portals you have built in such short time, I imagine you had rather a good number of specifics to begin with.”

As she turned her head into the touch, she gave a wry chuckle. “Well, yes and no. I mean, it’s to do with relative velocity and particle acceleration due to exotic matter, or at least it is the way I see it. And I suppose you could say it’s something similar to the Casimir effect, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to mean anything to her.”

“It does not mean much to me,” he said, apologetic, “but then I am hardly even in her league, let alone your own.”

That made her smile more real, and she leaned over to poke him in the upper arm with one small finger. “Oh, you’re pretty special in your own way, big guy.”

It would have been very easy to stand, to take her hand in his and lead her back down to the village. Certainly every so often an arm would rise in simple greeting, and he would return the gesture. And yet it felt easier still to just stay in Jane’s company as she balanced her tablet on her knees, muttering quietly to herself as she went about her work.

Thor raised his face to the sky, closed his eyes. The chill of the morning was rising, the sky clearing of early morning mist. But he could still feel the water on his skin. With but a whisper it could shiver with electric promise, the reminder of the power that burned always in his blood, pooled in his heart, set his spirit alight.

Only when Hogun returned did he lift himself from his reverie, muscles and mind both restless for movement, for purpose. They clasped hands when he stood, and Hogun nodded; Thor noticed that he had dressed again in something closer to his usual armour.

“Njörðr is not in Nóatún, but the Lady Freyja is present and would very dearly wish to see you.” His lips twitched in the closest approximation of a smile they could manage. “I had to dissuade her from flying out here herself to accompany you into the city.”

Thor did not bother to hide his own laughter. “That sounds very much like the Freyja I remember.”

“She never does change.” Nodding his head down to where Loki still mingled with the other villagers, he added, “It will be several hours before her ship arrives.”

“The journey should at least give Jane and Loki time to prepare,” Thor observed, though he could not escape either Jane’s careful stare nor Hogun’s even intent.

“I do hope you do not make a mistake in this, Thor.”

With one hand upon his friend’s armoured shoulder, he gave only a shrug; the gesture felt as familiar to him as breathing. “I’ve made them before. And they have worked out so far, have they not?”

“Luck is a fragile thing.”

He let the amusement fade, eyes moving again to his brother, wrapped as always now in the form of a Jötunn thrall. “Yes. But then it always has been.”

 

*****

 

It would be a journey of days by horseback, yet the sky-chariot their request had summoned meant it would be only a matter of hours until they docked in the harbours of Nóatún. Jane watched the Lady Freyja’s flagship draw close from a pass between the mountains, eyes so wide it seemed they would swallow the sight whole.

“Now _that_ is beyond awesome.” Small fingers closed tight on his arm, her whole body vibrating with excitement. “Can I have one?”

With a laugh, he gave over easily to the urge to sweep her up into his arms. “Tell me when comes your name day, and we shall see.”

The journey itself proved uneventful enough. Together the three of them took their place in a well-appointed cabin with sprawling windows that allowed a panoramic view of the land about them. The ship chased the curves of a great river, alive with the refracted fire of blue diamond. Loki had curled himself into a soft nest of feather and softened sea-sponge, with Jane slightly awkwardly perched at his side. Though her attention often meandered to the view, she proved equally intrigued by the information Loki offered with a blithe disregard. Thor had to wonder if she realised how very remarkable such behaviour on his part was; Loki had always been the type to keep his secrets and his knowledge to himself.

For his own part, Thor followed only little of the conversation that turned from lecture to questioning to spirited debate to outright argument. As long as the venom kept only to matters of science and sorcery, Thor let them be. Instead he let his attention dream upon the horizon, mountains giving way to foothills and then to an increasing density of jungle. The faint hum of the chaos engine pulsed through the ship entire, lulling him to sleep in the fashion of a great cat’s purr. He almost felt to be dreaming entire when at last the city opened herself before them: like the span of a kraken’s many arms she spread out into the sea in all directions. Or perhaps the water seeped into its streets. Given how well one blended to the other, it was all too hard to decide.

“Much as Freyja would no doubt wish to see us this evening, we will call on her in the morning,” Hogun announced, but she had apparently divined as much; like Frigga, Freyja had always been the type to see right through everyone else. They had scarcely settled to the rooms, Jane tight-lipped but silent over how again Thor and Loki had been assigned shared chambers, when a messenger arrived to say that Freyja had requested their presence in her hall. Knowing Freyja as he did, Thor felt safe to say _request_ was but a polite cover for _explicit demand_.

Thor personally relayed to Jane their appointment, and then returned to his own chambers to attire himself in something more appropriate. Loki lounged in one of the three great windowseats that made up the majority of the bedchamber’s walls, one long leg dangling free from the simple travelling gown he still wore. “Would it make her feel better,” he asked, lazy as a slumbering satiated lion, “if she could come in here and help you babysit your baby brother?”

“Stop it. And hurry up – why have you not yet changed?”

“Why will you not even look at me?” he shot back, grin only growing wider. “Am I so very repugnant, in my natural form?”

Thor pursed his lips, stilled in his selection of tunic and trousers, but he did not turn from his trunk of borrowed finery. “That is not your natural form.”

“Ah, you forget where your father stole me from.”

He let the lid fall with a slam, turned around with eyes blazing and fists clenched. Yet his voice remained even, low. “That is not what I meant.”

“You really do know nothing at all.” But Loki said nothing more, shedding the gown so that he might wear something more suited to an audience with the king’s daughter. His hair he worked into an unadorned braid that nestled down the length of his spine. When he stood before his brother with arms opened mockingly wide, Thor could not stop a sharp indrawn breath: the fluttering overgarment resembled nothing so much as snowflakes sewn into silk, sheer over the leather of the brief tunic beneath.

“Where did you get that?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Under the glare, Loki gave an impatient snort. “I stole it, of course. I told you already I cannot use my seiðr in the ways I did before.”

Swallowing hard, Thor turned to the door. “Come, then,” he said, gruff, and Loki gave a high chuckle in that smoky voice he’d chosen for this form.

“Aren’t you going to tell me how pretty I am?”

“I’m sure you already know.”

A royal gondola had been sent to collect them for their journey through the canals of Nóatún; when they left their shared chambers and joined Jane, Thor found it waiting at the steps just beyond the receiving chamber of Hogun’s townhouse. He was somewhat relieved to see that Freyja had not come to collect them herself, nor had she sent her brother, whom Hogun had dourly announced was present on a visit from Álfheimr. It was only the three of them and a brief contingent of her household guard upon the smooth waters of the private streets behind the avenues.

Her floating hall had long been named Sessrúmnir, and seemed to have been constructed of arches that spiralled ever upwards like the geometrics of a seashell, its entirety set upon the gentle rise and fall of the waves. Like being aboard a ship, it could take some getting used to; when one did so, they would find sleeping there was like being rocked gently in a cradle. Thor had always had good sealegs, and Loki showed no discomfort as they left the gondola. However, they had barely moved beyond the dock when Jane paled to match the shimmering nacre of the arches.

Taking her arm and tucking in lightly into his elbow, Thor furrowed his brow. “Are you well?”

“I…yeah.” Pushing her hair back, she gave him a watery smile. “Kind of wish you’d warned me, though. I could have packed some Dramamine or something.”

Unlike the stone-wrought structures more common to the hills and mountains of the hinterlands, the buildings of Nóatún had been built as light and simple as the trailing fronds of a coral in current. Freyja’s receiving hall had been centred about a courtyard open to the water below, with shapes both small and large moving beneath the ripple of the waves. Hanging vines moved over every surface, the air rich with the scent of salt, arching walls latticed and open to the scents and sounds of the sea beyond. At its far end, within a vined and flowered gazebo, Thor could see clearly a figure seated at a table. With the clash of guards presenting arms she rose, stood for a moment at the top of the stairs.

Lovely Freyja: smaller than even Jane, she still managed to be both slender and voluptuous. Her long black hair had been worked into a series of many-stranded braids, rich with falcon feathers; at its peak a jewelled comb supported the waterfall-like flow of her veil down her back. The gown she wore seemed stitched of a fabric much the same, for Thor could easily make out the shift of her body beneath the gauzy material. His own court dress felt stifling by comparison. Somehow they had all forgotten the tropic heat of Vanaheimr’s seaside, where the air always lay thick with humidity, underlain with the promise of thunder. He cast a glance sideways, yet Loki seemed undisturbed by either the heat or the king’s daughter herself.

A great cat yawned at her side, almost as large as she; it remained at her table though she descended upon bare feet and came down to meet them all. Freyja came to him first, stretching her arms around him in an embrace he willingly returned, no matter how he had to stoop to do so. The sweet scent of her filled his nostrils, that of a garden born of the sea both above and below, salt-sweet and somehow ever familiar. Then she drew back, small hands soft on his face, eyes large and over bright with tears.

“I am so very sorry.” And now she encouraged his head to her neck, pressing him so very close as if she hoped to leech from him his grief. Her words were but the gentlest whisper pressed against his ear. “I would have come, had your father not closed the Bifröst. I had no care for the dangers of war or the Dökkálfar, not when it came to the farewell of your sweet mother.”

There were many things he could say. There were many things he knew he must say. And yet he could not speak around the thickening of his throat, the grief bitter and strong as it had been the day Frigga had fallen in her own chambers.

“Thank you.”

“And your brother.” Even as he stiffened she only held him all the harder; Loki’s eyes were curious and flat upon the crawling skin of his back. “I know how you must miss him.” When she drew back, a hand trailed sinuous and sad down his cheek, eyes ever more luminous and dark. “If I had not my Freyr, I would die.”

Again, he could only choke on the simplest of platitudes. “Thank you.”

For a moment she held his gaze, searching and curious; he felt a faint chill trip down the column of his spine, but then she was looking to his left, the scarlet of her smile welcoming. “You have brought guests with you, I see.”

The warmth of her voice could not quite quell his unease as her gaze skipped over Jane to Loki and then back again. “This is Dr. Jane Foster,” he said, perhaps a shade too quickly. “She hails from Midgard.”

Her brow furrowed over the unfamiliar title. “A healer?”

“A scholar of the skies.” He could not help the way his hand moved, curled about hers. “I have been aiding her in her studies. In return she had been a true and noble friend to both myself and to Asgard. Without her, the universe entire might have fallen to Malekith’s madness.”

With the inborn ease of one of noble blood, Freyja shifted so she might stand before Jane, her lovely face grave and solemn. “Jane Foster,” she said, soft and strong as any summer current, “Vanaheimr thanks you for your service.”

“I…” Jane glanced down to where Freyja had taken both of her hands into her own, apparently surprised by the intensity she felt there. “…you’re welcome.”

For all the kindness of her thanks and the gentle way she squeezed Jane’s hands before letting them go, the considering look Freyja gave Jane crawled uncertain through his mind; it felt like the passage of sudden ice through warm waters, slow and stately and cruel. Then she glanced over, curiosity turning to lascivious amusement. “And a Jötunn _thrall_ , Thor?” Running her tongue light beneath the smooth line of her teeth, she tilted her eyes coyly sideways. “Is she a gift?”

Jane’s expression soured, but Loki’s remained serene. “This is Járnsaxa,” Thor said, and while Mjölnir gave a warning hum from his hip he kept his own voice remarkably even. Trusting Loki in any matter was a game of chance, but he had to assume he had been correct in that Freyja would not realise who he was. “During the convergence, a frost beast was accidentally shifted from Jötunheimr to Midgard. While the Lady Jane and I returned the beast, we met Járnsaxa, and in the process did her a favour she felt compelled to repay.”

“Or else she just wanted off that desolate rock, though who could blame her?” This time when Freyja moved to stand before her guest, every motion shivered through her hips and spine. “Hello, Járnsaxa.”

Even as Thor caught a quiet breath Loki bowed his head, glanced upward through the sweep of his eyelashes. “Lady Freyja.”

Immediately she took his face between her small hands, tilted it sideways as she leaned close. “You are very lovely,” she breathed, eyes tracing the pattern of his Jötunn tribal markings; Loki allowed it without protest, hands serenely linked before his hips.

“As are you,” he said, and smiled in a way so simple and free Thor felt as if the air had been kicked from his lungs. “A true queen of love and beauty.”

Freyja’s laughter was high and tinkling; she let him go, and leaned back with her lips pursed in the promise of a kiss. “Flatterer. It is a pity indeed he had not meant you for us.” Turning to Thor once more, she pouted just a little. “Are you sure you won’t permit Járnsaxa to stay?”

“I believe Járnsaxa believes her place with the Lady Jane and I.”

Though Thor had down his level best not to speak through gritted teeth, her knowing smirk said she gleaned his struggle well enough. Still, her eyes lingered again over the sleek softness of Loki’s female Jötunn form, hardly hidden at all in the snowflake translucency of the gown and tunic he had chosen. “I am not certain you quite understand how unique a gift you have been given, with her service.”

“She is like no other I have met, certainly.”

Fortunately Loki managed to withhold what Thor knew would be utter disgust at his attempt at irony, but Freyja just chuckled. “Oh, you have met her ilk before. I know you remember Angrboða.”

The name lay upon his own tongue like bitter ice, unmelted, unspoken. “I do.”

“Many thousands of years ago, we bred amongst ourselves more readily. The Vanir always found the Jötnar of interest, being they were so fecund in their chosen way.” Her smile grew, one hand light upon a well-curved hip. “The bloodlines grew well-blended, well beyond any hope of separation in the future. Although with time prejudices grew, families moved apart, bloodlines thinned. But there’s always a throwback or two, in every generation.”

Thor frowned, glanced to Loki; he appeared unmoved by the discussion. But then he had also never spoken of his comparatively smaller form, nor of what he had meant by his claim that the shift between genders was a Jötunn trait. “Then Járnsaxa is not pure Jötunn?”

“I suppose she is close enough to it – oh, but then who _is_ pure of blood, amongst us?” Her finger sat light upon one vambrace, its fore panel now clear of the horned insignia he had borne for the year after Loki’s first presumed death. And she smiled, low and laughing. “Certainly not _you_ , Thunderer. There’s a bit of Jötunn in your veins too, if the rumours are true.” Even as he stiffened she let her hand fall free, waved it in casual dismissal of the faint charge building upon the air. “They say too that Frigga had a dash of Vanir back in her own tree. We always assumed it would explain rather a few things about our lovely Loki.”

His heart clenched. “What does that mean?”

The sharp tone hardly stilled her tongue; Freyja went ever onward, though he suspected she only seemed oblivious. “We Vanir are a passionate people.” She turned her quick dark eyes on to Jane, filled with mirth. “Do not let the good Hogun fool you into thinking otherwise.”

“You speak of his madness,” Thor said, flat, and she turned on him with a whipcrack speed.

“I speak of his _seiðr_. Though your father had it too, it was greater still than even your mother might have provided. Losing Loki was a tragedy indeed, for all the worlds.”

Jane’s reply was very flat, eyes fixed firmly upon Freyja. “He tried to conquer Midgard.”

Rolling her eyes, Freyja turned on the ball of her foot, took three steps upward; it still brought her barely in line with Thor’s forehead. “Oh, _so_ many have had that thought, now and then. Norns alone know why he bothered; it’s hardly worth the trouble.” Though Jane’s mouth had fallen open, Freyja gave a dramatic gesture towards Thor instead. “But then, with a brother like Thor here, who could blame him?”

He had gone very cold. “What?”

Now both her hands were on her hips; if not for the easy sensuality of her every movement, she might have seemed a child on the verge of a tantrum. “Do you still not understand, even now? Loki never had much care for being the power on the throne, anyone could see that. The goings on behind it are so much more interesting. But then Thor could be so very blinding, in the old days…” Any anger she might have been channelling slipped away from her then, her whole body seeming to deflate as she took in what Thor must be his expression of utter disbelief. “Oh, I do adore you so. But you know it to be true. Loki loved you, so very much. But he just wanted to be seen. At your side. Yet what mere moon could hope to be seen in the fire of such a vast sun?”

Thor might not have been able to take his gaze from Freyja’s had it not been for the choked sound from his side; when he glanced over he found that Loki had turned away, head bowed, face masked from them all. Freyja leaned forward, her curiosity mixed with genuine concern.

“Járnsaxa? Is something the matter?”

Thor’s hand rose, but for all he wished for nothing more than to place it on his shoulder he could not reach forward. Jane remained very silent at his side, even as Loki turned back with a faint smile upon bloodless lips. “Oh, no. Just a small ache, in my belly. Something I ate, perhaps?” His composure grew by the moment, voice strengthening to match. “It will pass.”

Again she took his hand, pressing the long length of it between her palms. “I do hope so. You are so very lovely, and I hope to speak with you at some length. I would not like you to be ill while you are here in Nóatún.”

Thor could think of nothing to say to break the unease that had risen between them all. Yet Jane’s attention had shifted; her surprise was what broke the silence. “I thought cats hated water.”

Freyja followed her gaze, then chuckled. The panther, a smoky-blue creature of sleek fur and long ears, had slipped into the water as smoothly as any seal. “One must never presume to tell a feline what it enjoys,” she murmured, but her eyes had moved to Thor. “Things as seen are often not what they seem. But then I expect you know that, if you have travelled so far from your own home.”

“That…” Jane gave a brief look to Thor, who only nodded; he did not need to look to Loki to sense his approval of the conversation’s fresh direction. “…it’s kind of why we’re here, actually.”

“Oh?”

Straightening slightly, lovely in the court dress Gróa had found and adjusted for her, Jane again passed her hand through her hair, this time completely messing up the light style one of the housemaids had worked into it. “I’m studying ways of interstellar travel across the realms, and while the Allfather has been kind enough to allow me some study of the Bifröst, it doesn’t really tell me a lot about how it came to be in the first place. It…doesn’t really lend itself well to reverse engineering.”

Freyja smiled. “No, it does not.” Extending a hand, she took Jane’s in her own, drew her up beside her. “Come, take a cup of tea with me, and we can discuss it, yes?”

It didn’t begin immediately, though Thor could feel the almost tangible excitement of both Loki and Jane; he almost felt left out, considering such matters had never really captured his attention or interest in the past. He could do little more than accept a delicate cup of a cool liquid which shimmered more colours than it really ought to, watching as Jane slowly gathered herself and her thoughts. Any previous insult to Midgard or her own race seemed forgotten with the unleashing of her curious mind.

“Well, I’d heard that you and your…your völva, you understand what it was, that was used to create and power the Bifröst,” she began, and even in that short time Thor could see her seguing into the confident self she always was when speaking of her science. Freyja responded so easily to it, leaning forward with her chin cradled in the palm of her hand.

“Ah, I see.” Her eyes narrowed in thought, the rosebud of her mouth pulled tight. “You speak of the Vanadís.”

Loki leaned closer seemingly without thought, face in open curiosity. In direct contrast Jane pushed backward into her chair, regarding the other woman with a critical curious gaze. “So what is the Vanadís?”

Raising both palms, unfolding her fingers like two fans, Freyja cast them about the space with easy grace. “Better to ask what is it not?” Letting her hands fall again to the table, she smiled in a way that ached in Thor’s heart; his mother had held much the same expression when explaining the wonders of the realms to two small boys. “It is everywhere,” she said, easy and light, and Jane frowned deeper still.

“I don’t understand.”

Freyja reached for her cup, took an easy sip of the tea that now shimmered silver and blue. “How do you propose to bend space to your will, Dr. Foster?”

“I…well. I guess it’s all to do with what we call exotic matter, and negative mass.” Her own tea remained untouched as she began to strum the fingers of one hand upon the table, face drawn in deep thought as she fought for a translation of a knowledge so vast Thor could not understand how she contained it at all. “Basically what it comes down to is this: if we can introduce into a system behaviour that is at odds with what is expected, the system would work to balance itself out, and therefore restore equilibrium. But if we’re forcing it within a confined space, it will stretch over that time. But then it will contract. …does this make any sense to you?”

The faint smile held a great deal of admiration. “You create one impossible state by forcing the system to contradict another, less improbable, one. Yes, I understand what you mean.”

Pushing at her teacup so it scooted along the smoothness of the table, Jane nodded. “In a way it’s like contracting space in front of you, so what’s behind has to expand in order to compensate for it.”

“Yes. This is something of the principle upon with the Bifröst operates.”

This could not surprise Thor in any way despite his own lack of understanding of such matters, considering Jane had constructed the portals with Heimdall’s information about it. But still he had felt that the portals were quite different to the sensation of the Bifröst, in which he could imagine the space in front being smaller and that in back larger. With the portals, it was like being stretched over a great distance before snapping to another point, as if they’d been made over into some elastic creature. Freyja herself took another sip of tea, then nodded.

“The Vanadís, I suppose, might be analogous to what you call negative mass. It exists everywhere around us. It just needs to be stabilised.”

“Like, by a closed cosmic string?” At the considering look this earned her, Jane leaned forward, her hair falling into her face even as her hands began to move in animated pattern. “Sorry, it’s like…a phase transition. Where matter transforms at some boundary. A cosmic string is…kind of a defect, in space and time. If it’s closed, it tends to attract matter. It’s really just a kind of gravitation? But it’s relevant enough because a cosmic string with negative mass would probably stabilise a wormhole, if it wound about it the right way.”

For a moment Freyja let the thought move through her mind; Thor could almost imagine the wheels of her mind turning it over and over, for all he had no idea what it meant. “Are these cosmic strings then a common manifestation?”

Jane looked startled. Then she laughed. “Oh, god, no. We haven’t actually proved they even exist.” Then she paused, looked somewhat uncomfortable, like a first-time student addressed by a professor. “But…we theorise.”

“And very well, at that.” Still, despite her obvious pleasure in Jane’s words, Freyja’s face had drawn itself into a melancholic tilt. “Unfortunately that which we call the Vanadís is not generated easily. The Bifröst harnesses the negative mass it has provided in order to bend space, but the knowledge of how to isolate it has long been lost. We were able to repair the damage to the bridge and recreate the Observatory, but only because the bridge stabilised itself. Had that been lost, the Bifröst never would have been opened again.”

“I see.” She licked her lips, gave Thor a look. He could only shrug, though at his side Loki gave an almost imperceptible nod. “…thank you. It was really nice of you to talk to me about this stuff.”

“I am afraid I have not been much help to you.”

“No, no…you have.” Only the way she gently wrapped her hands about her cup hid their faint tremor. “Thank you.”

For a long moment no-one spoke. Thor knew Loki had much to say, but as a Jötunn thrall such subjects were beyond his permissible conversation, though they both knew Freyja would allow it. Only her keen sense of Loki’s character kept his mouth shut, Thor felt certain; it was but a small miracle in and of itself that she had not realised who Járnsaxa truly was.

Clearing his throat, Thor searched for another topic. “Is Óðr not present?”

Freyja waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, I believe he travels with my father. I cannot be certain.”

“You have lost him _again_?” he said, unable to mask his surprise; Freyja only rolled her eyes.

“Oh, he’ll find his way home again when he wants his dinner, I am sure.” Taking a brief sip of her cup, she turned her gaze again. “So has your father met your lovely Jötunn?”

Loki sat very stiff in his assigned place, gave his own answer without invitation. “No.”

The look Freyja gave him was curious, though when nothing more was forthcoming she then turned a devilish smile to Thor instead. “Well, I should keep her below his notice. I wouldn’t trust him not to steal her away. Frankly you shouldn’t trust _me_ not to steal her away, but at least I’m telling you so.” Reaching for one of the sugared confections upon the table, she popped one into her mouth, blinked. “Have you all eaten? You should stay for dinner.”

“Much as we should like to, it has been a long day.”

Though she frowned deeply, her words were those of a pure diplomat. “It is a journey from the Tana Fork, indeed.” One hand moved forward, bare fingers laid over his own. “But though I know dear Hogun has opened his halls to you, will you not stay with me? I can give you lovely rooms here in my home, and I should very much like to have you here from the break of morning.”

“I…” The harsh pinch of his thigh beneath the table almost had him biting off the tip of his tongue. “…of course. If it will make you happy.”

Her smile held a childish glee. “Oh, it will indeed,” she said, “although I had already prepared rooms for you, so I would have been very cross indeed had you thought to decline.”

Much as Freyja’s overenthusiasm could become tiring, Thor couldn’t help but smile. He knew it was something many had said they had in common. “I know you too well, it seems.”

She winked. “I shall have a light meal sent to your rooms, for all three of you.” Then she paused. “Unless, of course, you wish to come to mine after all?”

“It is a kind offer, Freyja, but—”

“Oh, I know.” When they rose, she guided them to the foot of the stairs where a page awaited. Standing again upon the very tips of her feet, she pressed a brief kiss to his lips. Thor still had to lean downwards to allow it, and saw as he drew back the bright shimmer of her eyes. “Go, be with your lovely ladies. Find your comfort. I shall see you in the morning.”

Thor did not quite like Loki’s assessing gaze. But they were spirited away, to chambers that their new hostess had so thoughtfully prepared earlier. Yet again Jane had been given separate chambers of her own, while Loki and Thor had chambers to share. Seeing the unhappiness she hid behind a tight smile, when they were offered dinner Thor asked for it to be served upon the balcony in her own rooms. Only when the meal had been laid out and the servants dismissed did he turn to her, taking up her hands and giving her a smile as brilliant as the setting of the sun over the far horizon.

“Jane.” He tightened his hands so that she nearly winced, though the faint smile playing at her lips seemed to indicate his own joy was contagious. “Jane, do you have any idea how truly _extraordinary_ you are?”

Her cheeks pinked, though her brow furrowed. “Well, I think my portals work on a slightly different system to the Bifröst. I don’t even entirely understand _how_ , because some of what Heimdall told me didn’t even make sense, I just ran on instinct, and lucked out—”

“Jane.” With his hands upon her face, he stilled her babble with both finger and his ever-widening smile. Leaning close, Thor called upon what charm he knew he possessed and whispered, “ _You are brilliant_.”

Her wide eyes somehow grew more so. “Oh. Yeah. Um.” She gave a brief, stuttering laugh. “…okay.”

Despite the way she had flushed from the collar of her dress to the roots of her hair, Thor could still see the doubt in her eyes. It ached that he might have helped put it there, by leaving her behind and causing her to doubt her own worth. “You speak in theories of what you have already done. When Freyja herself thinks is impossible.”

“I don’t even know for sure what I did!”

Loki was muttering something that sounded suspiciously like _monkeys with fire_. Ignoring him, Thor reserved his continued smile only for her.

“But you did it.”

“I did,” she said, slow. “But really, it was us. As a team. _We_ did it.”

“Oh, must we keep on with the nauseating self-congratulation?” Loki broke in, and Thor raised an eyebrow. Apparently sensing that the brothers could argue just as well with a staring competition as with words and fists, Jane broke in with something far less inflammatory.

“Well, at least we know the Vanadís is out of reach.”

It did not seem to aid matters much, given Loki only turned his glare upon her. “Of course it isn’t. And we need it.”

“What do you mean, _we need it_?” Jane curled her tongue around the quoted words. “I thought all we needed was to know where they all were.”

“So we might collect them.”

“And lock them away,” Thor interjected, and Loki turned on him with a hiss.

“Oh, _yes_. What a wonderful plan! Collect them all together in one place for convenience and then expect Thanos not to come storming in and take them. Excellent.” Pushing a hand back through his hair dislodged its braid, gave his features a feral slant that drove Thor half a step backward even before he snarled, “Shall I paint a target upon Asgard, or will you do it?”

“We can separate—”

“They were separate to begin with! And you will never protect them forever.” His hands had clenched now to fists, eyes molten and demanding. “We must use them to destroy him.”

Thor shook his head. “No.”

“Or he will use them to destroy _you_.”

“Loki.”

The whole slim body vibrated with withheld vexation, one hand clenched tight about the curlicued edge of the dining table. “Oh, you don’t trust me. That’s perfectly all right. I would not trust me either. But don’t tell me _you_ would run away from a fight.”

The rich and generous meal before them had once held an appealing scent; it curdled now, as bitter as his words, as the memory of a trembling body fallen to stillness in his arms on the salted soil of a barren world. “It would only destroy you.”

“Yes, likely as not,” he snapped back, both flippant and furious. “So why else would I seek out a fool like _you_ to aid me in this?”

The pain of those words was breathtaking, a knife pressed up under his ribs and directly into his heart. Yet Loki had turned away, his demand directed at Jane alone.

“Freyja believes that the Vanadís cannot be isolated.” He leaned forward, face warped in fierce demand. “But is that not what you do, when you generate your portals?”

Much as he wished in that moment only to spirit her away from Loki’s wrath, Thor could not help but admire the way Jane’s composure scarcely wavered. “I think so. I mean, it’s hard to say; we don’t really have the equipment to measure this sort of matter. It doesn’t even exist, except by its influence. It’s there, but by action rather than mass.” Moving a hand through her hair, she made herself appear almost as dishevelled as Loki; Thor decided it might be wise to keep the comparison to himself. “But yeah. It’s not like the Bifröst, but I’m pretty sure it’s negative mass driving the phase shift, and contracting space.”

“In which case you create the Vanadís every time you open a portal,” Loki prompted, and she gave an exasperated huff.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t _hold_. Even if Thor didn’t bring them down, they would collapse upon themselves anyway, and sooner rather than later. The system doesn’t have a stable centre.”

“But you have seen those that do.”

Much as Jane clearly did not appreciate Loki’s needling, the thought gave her pause. “…the anomalies.”

“Indeed.” Again, his frustration boiled over like a steaming kettle left too low over a campfire, his movements animated as his hands sketched vague symbols upon the air. “The Vanadís is all the more dangerous for the fact it cannot be isolated to one place and time. It is, as Freyja noted, everywhere.”

“Oh, _god_.” Thor frowned even as Jane buried her head in her hands. “So you couldn’t ever stop Thanos getting his hands on the Vanadís anyway,” she intoned, and Thor’s blood felt to have begun to crystallise to ice. Having subsided again to calm, Loki just shrugged, though the flash of his eyes was the murderous red of the aether twisted to Malekith’s command.

“He will get his hands on all six of the stones one way or another. The only way to stop him is to kill him.”

Thor’s skin prickled with imagined frostbite as he stared at his brother, words tumbling over one another to mad collision in his mind. _Beautiful. Mad. Deadly. ‘Oh! What I could do with the power in her…’_

“There are other ways,” he said, hoarse, and Loki all but laughed in his face.

“Are there _really_?” Raising his hands, he began to undo his braid with furious jerks, his eyes never once lifting from Thor’s. “And you are the one who risked the entire universe to save a mortal woman, rather than just sitting around waiting for him to come to you as your father asked!”

“That is not how it was,” he returned hotly, temper catching up with the roil of storm in his mind; Loki just rolled his eyes skyward. Chaos had always called most strongly to his disordered heart.

“What, so you did it because he killed your mother?”

“I did it because I could not stand by and simply watch the worlds fall!” Thor shouted, upon his feet, hands balled to fists. In a flash Loki rose from the table, skirted about it to meet him toe to toe, words hissed cold into his face.

“Is that not what you would be doing now?”

“No!”

“It is,” he said, and he whipped his hair back over his shoulder. The disgust in his expression chilled him more than any insult ever could. “Thor. You do not have to trust _me_. But you can trust my self-interest. You did before. Why can’t you do it again?”

The ache of it held the wounds of a thousand years. “Loki, I—”

He threw one hand out, frustration burned into even his blazing eyes. “The infinity stones hold in them the power to unmake the universe – but this is not the infinite darkness Malekith sought to bring down! Thanos doesn’t wish to destroy the physical. It’s the _spiritual_ he will bring to ruin – because every soul he takes will be given as blöt to his mistress. And in her hands, their suffering will be her joy…and his, too, though she will never be satisfied. It will be for nothing, in the end.”

“ _Loki_.”

And he laughed, bitter and frozen. One hand, dark of nail and etched with familial lines that marked him as anything but Odinson, came to rest light upon his cheek. Thor flinched, and Loki’s mad grin only grew all the wider. “Oh, and what have we here? My big brother. The golden prince of Asgard. Worthiest warrior, the lord of storm and thunder, master of the hammer Mjölnir.” And he stepped backward, scorn dripping from every word. “I thought of all people, _you_ would be the hero we needed.”

“I…’”

“Good night, Thor.”

Though Thor did not follow, he could feel that Loki had stormed back to their shared chambers; even at a distance the faint hum of Mjölnir told him as much, set upon a pedestal as she was within those rooms. But for all his weapon’s awareness of his brother’s presence, Thor did not follow. It could be a mistake to leave him alone. But Jane’s hand had come to rest upon his arm, the small warmth of her like an enveloping summer light. With it came unbidden the memory of his mother, of the way she had curled around him and his brother alike on a summer day, beneath the spreading branches of a tree above.

“Are you all right?” she asked, soft, and he sighed.

“No. No, I don’t believe so.”

“You do realise he’s _trying_ to upset you?”

Wry, Thor curved his hand over hers. “And he is doing a remarkable job of it.”

“I guess that’s what he’s good at.” But she took no amusement in this truth. Instead she looked at him with concern, dark eyes wide. “Thor. Don’t let him do this to you.”

“What is it that they say – the oldest habits die the hardest?”

Shaking her head, she stood. “Come on. We’re going to go get a drink.”

But they did not leave her chambers. Instead a near-wordless servant brought them an array of wines of spirits, given Jane had no idea what the different kinds were and Thor did not feel in the mood to try and pin down his own preferences. Even as Jane stared at the ridiculous selection Thor carefully ignored the studied look of the serving maid. It was clear she could not believe he would choose a scholarly mortal over the easy sensuality presented by his Jötunn thrall.

_If only you knew the price I have paid in receiving that what I wished most for._

Tiredness overtook him with glum and alarming speed; Thor was a person so very unused to despair. Given the company he currently kept it made even less sense. Jane was a brilliant woman, and beautiful with it. In her he had found as true a friend as he could ever hope for. Yet the simple knowledge that she wanted more of him felt like a rope tightening about his throat with every passing moment – and it did not help that he knew some part of him would have given it freely in the days before the failed coronation.

Jane had moved to the balcony, a tall glass in hand as she leaned forward. Thor followed, his own choice a stout bottle with an oaky aroma, earthy and rich. At her side he leaned upon the balustrade, and even its flimsy struts held a strength more than enough to bear his weight. Taking a long draught of the ale, he let his eyes wander to the mirrored sky in the sea, shimmering and strange in the restless tremor of the tides.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, low. All he had left was the shake of his head.

“I do not even know anymore.”

With an ease he wouldn’t have suspected her likely to possess, Jane threw back the rest of her glass; setting it aside, she stepped forward. In the dim light of the sconces, the starlight, her eyes were luminous paths to worlds as yet unknown. “You’re not alone, you know. You don’t have to protect the universe all by yourself. If the threat of Thanos is so real, then why can’t we tell other—”

His hand upon her shoulder stopped her short. “Jane.” He had to pause to take a breath, to set his own half-filled bottle aside. “Much as I treasure and appreciate your counsel, I would…I would let such matters lie, tonight.”

Though she frowned, she did not say anything contrary. Instead she leaned close, one hand upon his shoulder. The light pressure of it encouraged him forward, down, hair falling forward over a shoulder as she rose up on her toes, fitted her lips to his. The taste of strawberry wine upon her skin felt to break something in him; he surged forward, gathered her close. The stirring low in his abdomen was a banked fire set suddenly ablaze, and he swallowed her cry of surprise as he spun on a heel, seated her upon the balcony. With a laugh she broke the kiss, leaned back, arms spread wide as she turned her face to the expanse of the unfamiliar sky.

“It’s like flying,” she breathed, eyes wide and voice dreamy. Tightening his hands on her waist, Thor regretted immediately what he had done. With a gentle press at the small of her back, he encouraged her upward; she surged up to drape her arms about his neck, her sigh something closer to a giggle as she nuzzled into his throat. It was only with great difficulty that he set her down upon her feet, though he could not quite let her go.

“Jane.”

The unease of his tone had her eyes sharpening, brow furrowing. “What’s wrong?”

“This…is not a good idea.”

“Why not?” Now she laughed, confused. “I’m not drunk this time, I swear. Maybe a little tipsy, but—”

He caught that thought with hands pressed lightly to her cheeks. “I do not wish to ruin what we have,” he said, soft, and she frowned even against the press of skin to skin.

“What if it makes it better?”

“Please.” Yet he could not help the incline forward, his forehead pressed light against her own. “But…I do not wish to be alone.”

At such an angle he could not make out her eyes. At first she only sighed, then one small hand passed gently over his jaw. “How does anyone ever say no to you, with a face like that?”

Glancing upwards, he could not help the crooked grin, either. “You might ask Loki, I suppose.”

“I’d rather not.” A faint chill permeated the air as she stepped backward. Still Jane managed a wan smile, shaking out her hair before passing hands over the crumpled lines of the gown. “We’ll just get some sleep then, I guess.”

When he emerged from the bathchamber, stripped to his smallclothes, he found Jane in a borrowed nightdress. As he moved to the bed, the passage of her eyes over his skin felt heavy enough to mimic the trace of fingertips. He had always been easy in clothing or without, and he had nothing to be ashamed of – except perhaps that he teased her with what he could not offer her freely, not with his life still in such turmoil.

Though they both came to the bed from opposite sides it felt inevitable that they should meet in the middle, the scent of her so like the sea that moved the floor beneath their bodies. He held her close. For all she snuggled in closer, breathing slow and trusting, Thor still somehow felt he betrayed her simply because he offered such embrace. He knew what the morning would bring. The fact that she did not could never make it better.


	10. 2.4: Infighting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've had this chapter written for a little while, but have been dithering over whether to post it or not. When I started the fic I was fairly certain it was headed down the Thor/Loki route, but this is the chapter where that element of it really kicks in -- hence the rating change from "mature" to "explicit," not to mention the implications of single-sexed Jotnar. And it's all very complicated, of course. Because nothing is easy with those two. And there's Jane, too -- because she's still very much part of the story. We're only just over halfway through, after all.
> 
> So, basically: if you bail on the story now, I do understand. If you stick around to see where it's going, I'm glad to have you aboard, particularly as I'm nervous about posting this chapter! Also, I keep listening to [this lovely song](http://anadel.bandcamp.com/track/in-the-water) as I write these days. It...just seems to fit. <3

When he returned to his rooms come morning he found no sign of Loki, though Thor didn’t turn his mind to immediate worry about his brother’s location. Instead he debated the most likely of places until fingers rapped light upon his door. A young page proved to be on the other side, dark hair held in intricate knot atop her head by combs of coral and nacre.

“The Lady Freyja would be honoured if you should join her for breakfast by the tidal pools.” The considering look she gave him then had a remarkable boldness to it, but then Thor was aware both of the Vanir sense of permissiveness and also Freyja’s own liberal view of the world around her. “I understand your thrall is there already,” the young woman added with a smile. Thor kept his opinion behind a firm mask of disinterest.

“I see.”

The girl’s smile grew ever more pleasant. “Of course your mortal is invited.”

“I will dress, then, and come. Please pass the message to Lady Jane, and assure her that I will be at her door shortly to escort her.”

The curtsey dipped low, held with all the grace of a natural dancer. “Of course, my lord.”

Left alone again, Thor found his attention arrested by the view beyond his great windows. The shimmer of the seemingly endless stretch of the ocean beyond could make one feel as if they stood upon the edge of a kaleidoscope fashioned of diamond, faceted and brilliant in every fresh configuration. With a frown he turned his back upon it and went about his ablutions, dressing only simply in tunic, trousers, and thick leather boots.

Even when ready, Thor lingered a moment too long. The presence of Loki lurked everywhere in even this borrowed space, and he could not seem to let it go even when he knew now that his brother had not been lost to him. He never had understood why Loki talked of being shoved into the shadows by Thor’s brilliance. No matter how quietly Loki had stood in any background, everyone had always known he was there.

Jane kept a thoughtful sort of silence as they made their way through the halls, though whenever she returned his glances her smiles held a simple truth. Waking beside her, watching the dawn creep across her sleeping features, had been a gift he could not help but believe himself unworthy of. Even the warmth of her hand now in his seemed more than he deserved.

Freyja had summoned them to the pools: a series of interlocking circles and rings, fed by fountains that piped in water from the sea beyond the great glass windows arching from the floor to the central hub of its domed ceiling. Loki remained in the chosen form of Járnsaxa, fluid and lovely as ice as he moved through the water. He did not leave the pools even when Thor and Jane took their places with Freyja, a great meal spread before them. Eager as he was to sample some of his favourite fruits, Freyja did not allow them to eat in peace, grilling them instead about their reasons for their journey to Vanaheimr.

“So you really came only out of your mortal’s curiosity about the Vanadís?” Pouting, she stabbed a melon piece with a silver toothpick, as vicious and quick as snakebite. “You do know how to flatter a girl, oh lord of thunder.”

With diplomatic patience, Thor poured her a glass of sparkling water. “We had been talking of the Bifröst and its origins, and that led to a discussion of the infinity stones. Naturally Jane found the idea of the Bifröst being constructed from the space stone interesting, but then they do all have their own appeal.”

She snorted, dropped a diced strawberry into the glass. “Of course they do.”

“What do you know about them?” he asked as he piled his plate with the small cornmeal hotcakes so favoured by the Vanir; he only hoped the segue didn’t sound ridiculously contrived. Jane just leaned closer, chin upon laced fingers as she asked a question of her own.

“And what are they, exactly?”

Their joint curiosity didn’t seem to bother Freyja, but then she’d always been free with her tongue and her knowledge. “Gifts. Power.” She wriggled her fingers to her left, and Thor raised the plate of small cooked fish for her. “Spread over the tree so that one being might not possess all at the same time.” After taking a ladleful, she began to arrange the small grilled bodies on her flatbread. “To do so would drive any to madness.”

“What if they were already mad?” Thor asked, very quiet. With a blink, Freyja turned to laughter.

“I think your mortal here might tell you that it is something to do with her theories of negative mass and exotic matter.” The silver light of the morning danced on the shimmering weave of her hair, today worked with pearls and ribbon, as she shook her head. “Is the system inherently chaotic, or is that just the action of it trying to move to equilibrium?”

He gave up, reached for a seasoned starfruit. “You are both as bad as Loki.”

“No, you simply never learned to listen to your lessons,” she admonished with the wag of a finger, and then plucked a cube of salted seaweed bread from a bowl. “Though it is good to hear you speak of him without the pain I might have expected.”

For a moment he was very still. Then he moved again, clasping his hand about a crystal glass. “In some ways we might never be parted,” he murmured, ears burning with the sound of a body cutting effortlessly through saltwater.

Freyja shrugged at that, popped the bread into her mouth after dipping it in oil. “This is true,” she said, and then frowned. “Though they do say the soul stone might part the veil between the living and the dead.”

“It might,” he granted, and then swallowed hard. Word games had never been his chosen battlefield, and his erstwhile adherent in such matters had abandoned him for the sea. “But then, the reality stone could do so much more, I believe.”

Returning to the fish, Freyja cut off a small section. “And what did your mother tell you about the reality stone?”

“That no wish is ever granted quite the way one might expect.”

“She was very wise, your mother.” She chewed her next mouthful slowly, thoughtfully, then swallowed. “And of course, no-one knows what happened to the reality stone at any rate.”

It would have been but the work of a moment to pause the conversation, to summon Loki from the water. Yet Thor glanced to Jane, saw the bright curiosity in her dark eyes, and let the thought drift away. “As I remember it, a wish was made by the one who called it, and it hasn’t been seen since.”

“Perhaps the wish was not all they intended it to be.” Blithe as she was, Freyja’s eyes had turned knowing as she took another bite of her fish-laden bread. “Perhaps they did not want another to make their same mistake.”

“That is what Mother implied,” Thor said, slow, and she nodded.

“As I said: a wise woman. I will miss her counsel indeed.”

The ache of it always burned with the same heat as always, if not the same height of flame. “What do you know of the time stone?” he asked, quiet, and Freyja screwed up her small nose, reached for a decanter of dark sauce.

“I know it as another cautionary tale.”

“So do I.” Splattering her fish with a shower of drops, she set the crystal down again. Thor followed the action with slow eyes. “Though I do not remember it well; it was always Loki who was more interested in such stories.”

“And very clever with them too, as I remember it.” In that respect, he could not be surprised Loki had chosen the infinity stones as a bargaining tool. Any creature seeking power could not help but be intrigued by such promise of power and omniscience as they held, and yet they were obscure enough that any mission to locate them would not be undertaken but by the most brave.

_Or the most desperate_.

Jane took a sip of her own sparkling water. “So what was the story?”

Thor looked to Freyja, who gave a faint shrug; while they had both declared ignorance, arcane knowledge had always been more her forte than his. “It’s a very old story, and without much in the way of true tale – as I said, it acts more as a cautionary fable than any true retelling, though I suspect as in all myths and ancient stories it grew from a kernel of absolute truth.”

“Well, I’m inclined to believe that, considering who I’m sitting beside right now,” Jane said wryly, and Thor couldn’t contain a bark of sudden laughter. Freyja only shook her head, though her own mirth shone clear in her dark eyes.

“Oh, you mortals have such funny little stories about us all. And yet so many of them are not true, which is truly a pity.” She blinked innocently across the table. “I always did intend to send you a pair of war goats.”

He took a worldly sip of pulped fruit. “You know where I abide.”

Even as he wondered if he might come to regret that comment, Freyja pushed her plate aside, leaned her elbows upon the table. “But like I said…always that little seed. One might never know what it will grow to become.” Lazily she began to trace her finger in circling runes upon the smooth marble of the table. “Well, the story says that a seiðkona of no small power fell in love with a bard much younger than she. Though he thought her lovely enough, he did not like that she would age faster, that he would be young and hale while she grew old and withered.”

Beneath her fingers, two small flickering figures appeared; Jane drew in a very sharp breath, but the illusionary marionettes held deep familiarity to Thor. They resembled very much some of Loki’s earliest castings, a spell taught him by their mother. Freyja leaned back again, let the two tiny representations move simply upon the tabletop: one a lovely woman of middling age, the other a handsome youth just barely out of adolescence. Freyja went on with her telling without obvious concern, though Thor knew her well enough to suspect her to be like Loki: very aware of what such tactless words could do to those around her.

“She heard tell of the time stone, and went on a great mission to find it. Which she did – and then, she used it to alter her time, so she and her beloved might live forever.” Even as the two figures embraced, lovers united in epic verse, she frowned. “But she made a miscalculation.”

Jane’s face had paled, voice very flat. “She asked for immortality and not eternal youth.”

“Yes.” Not the least surprised by the Midgardian’s insight, Freyja lifted her shoulders, let them fall. “Though it has its tragedy – she was not ignorant of such things, I suspect. It was simply that her youth or her beauty were not what she wanted most. She only sought them because she wished to live always with him. And so that is what she asked for.”

“I bet he left her.”

In the face of Jane’s sudden, harsh ire, Freyja’s look had turned ironic indeed. “He was never a good husband to her, no.”

The air about Jane had turned chill and dark; Thor had very much begun to regret even bringing up the subject at all when she spoke again. “So what happened to her? Is she still supposed to be around?”

“One should think so, though no-one knows who she is. Because of how she appears, and the fact that her beloved left her when her beauty faded, she never leaves her cave.” Freyja’s laughter was short, sharp. “And given how old the story is, if it were true then our poor lovelorn heroine is likely a mass of withered skin and bone by now.”

The two figures upon the tabletop disappeared in a shower of sparks, but Thor could not raise his eyes from the place where they had so recently been. “A cautionary tale indeed.”

“Love does do such peculiar things to us,” she agreed, and Jane gave a startled, short laugh. When they both turned to her, she just shook her head.

“Reminds me of a poem my mother always liked. It started with a quote, about a sibyl…who is kind of like an oracle, I guess. She did a similar thing – asked to live a thousand years, but not for the eternal youth to go with it. The line says something about some boys coming to see her, and they ask her what she wants, and she just says ‘I want to die.’”

“Yes. It is funny how the stories are passed about.” Leaning back in her chair quite suddenly, Freyja’s eyes narrowed as she cast them between them both. “So are you interested in all the infinity stones, then?”

Thor’s spine tightened, but he gave a shrug, took another starfruit. “Oh, no. The subject only came up because of the space stone. I just…I remembered my mother’s stories.” Sticky juice dribbled between his fingers, and he looked down to see he had crushed it in his palm. “…I remembered my mother.”

The damp napkin fluttered down over his hand. “Indeed,” she said with soft care. “So much wisdom, lost to the ages.” And she sighed, drew away. “And she saw so much she could never speak of.”

In the silence that followed Thor spent too long cleaning his fingers of the remains of the fruit; the clink of cutlery and glass grew muted, slow. Then a lean figure strolled into view at the far end of the pools. Freyja’s entire body inclined towards the sound like a sunflower chasing morning light, and her features brightened so much that she herself became quite blinding. Without a word she took to her feet, scampered like a child about the curve of the pool. In a flurry of silks she leapt into his arms, and he caught her to twirl her about as though she weighed less than the feathers in her hair. When he set her down she gazed into his face, rapt; his returned look was just as entranced. Thor had to turn away. It had the sense of an intensely private moment, for all the open space of their surroundings.

Thor could see Jane’s mouth hanging open, and he already understood her mistake of assuming the man to be Óðr before Freyja returned to them, arm linked firmly through the man’s crooked elbow.

“Oh, Lady Jane, you must meet my brother, Freyr,” she trilled, and Jane’s expression congealed. It was no place to discuss the matter, however, and Thor tilted a nod towards Freyr.

The other man returned it with lupine poise. He had always has been possessed of the grace of a warrior more of Loki’s class than Thor’s own. This day he was dressed in the fashion of a warrior, too, shunning the more casual dress of the city. It made Thor’s muscles spark with a longing twinge; it had been too long since his last spar, and the city-dwelling Vanir had always been less inclined to war than their country cousins.

Freya had already returned his attention to Freyja. “Your guests, sister? Stolen from Hogun, or so I hear,” he said, and she gave a little chuckle.

“Yes, brother mine.” The brilliance of the smile they exchanged was a stab of pain, to Thor; it had been years since he and Loki had been so free with one another. And then Freyja was linking their hands, leaning even further into his side. “Thor has brought us a mortal, seeking answers to her questions.”

Dark eyebrows rose. “And have you given them to her?”

“As best I might.”

“And you are the very best,” he murmured, and pressed a little kiss to her nose that made her giggle. Then Freyr cast an arm sideways, dark eyes as watchful as those of Freyja’s preferred feline companions. “Thor, is that yours as well?”

Freyja followed his cast, and her fingers tightened over her brother’s. “Her name is Járnsaxa,” she murmured, though the tone became more pedestrian as she turned his attention elsewhere. “And this is Jane Foster.”

The charm of his greeting had a familiar lilt; Thor had often enough seen Freyr and Fandral compete for a lady’s attentions at court events. “A delight to meet you,” he drawled, and Freyja gathered up a generous pinch of his forearm’s skin. “But though you are lovely indeed, my sister is most radiant as always.”

Freyja’s smile would have dazzled a supernova. “So might I have a kiss, brother mine?”

With no hesitation he turned, caught the back of her lovely neck and pulled it gently back as he pressed his lips to hers. Yet he did not leave it there. One slim hand stole up behind her waist, drew their hips together as the kiss deepened; she gave a faint laughing hum and he drew back, pressing two fingers to her swollen lips. “Are you now satisfied, sister?”

She caught them between her teeth in a teasing nip. “Never.”

“Oh, but I do have other matters to attend.” Letting her go, he gave a brief nod to his sister’s guests. “It was good to see you, Thor.”

He strode away, dark hair glinting in the brightness of the sun. His sister’s eyes followed his progress with a hungry curiosity; Thor could claim no surprise when she gathered us her skirts with abrupt haste. “Do excuse me, a moment,” she said, breathless, and then she was running, bare feet so light over the mosaic of the tiles as she caught up to Freyr.

With hands held tight about her upper arms, Jane moved in closer to his side. “That’s her _brother_.”

“Indeed.”

The sharp look this earned him held the same edge as her words. “I’d hate to see what she’s like with her husband in public, then.”

“In fact they hardly speak,” he said, quiet, and Jane just shook her head.

“Probably that’s not so weird, if those two have always been like that.” Again Thor’s lack of response appeared to disturb her. “No, seriously now…is that _normal_ , around here?”

“It does depend on the _here_ you mean, but it can be, certainly.” The fierce probing of her gaze made his skin feel two sizes too small, his lungs quite empty of breath. “Asgard is not so inclined to such things, though it is hardly unheard of.”

“Well, I guess the ancient Egyptians did it, back where I come from.” From her dubious expression, whomever the Egyptians had been, she did not see it as applicable to her own experiences. “But then I’m talking _ancient_. Thousands of years.”

“Barely a generation by my count.”

He hadn’t quite meant to speak that thought aloud, and from the way Jane’s face shuttered itself away there had been good reason for it. “Yeah, thanks for the reminder.”

Anything he might have said to try to rectify the error tangled itself tight about his tongue, strangling any good sense he might have summoned. But Thor then realised that Freyr had returned. Certainly the prince of Álfheimr provided distraction enough, now dressed only in a brilliant strip of blue fabric wound about his slender hips; it showed to perfection that he had the build of a swimmer born. He was hairless, too, save for the slim dark trail from bellybutton to the low edge of his brief costume – and Thor knew it was only the vaguest sense of dignity that had him wearing it, for few Asgardians or Vanir wore any clothing at all to swim when in the company of friends and family.

Freyja had appeared unannounced at Thor’s elbow; the low words she dropped in his ear made him start, soft sound flavoured with laughter. “Isn’t he _lovely_?”

“You’re very lucky.” Jane’s tone was very practised, almost formal. “To have him as a brother, I mean.”

The knowing smirk Freyja shot her said much for what she thought of a Midgardian’s less cosmopolitan view of such matters. “I have often thought so.”

Thor chose to keep his own counsel on the subject. It had been an open secret from childhood that the twins of Njörðr had always been closer than traditional siblings. Loki had never thought much of it. _There are those who say we are too close, are there not?_ he had said to his own beloved brother more than once. Thor had never been able to return the words that had begun to burn in the back of his mind: _but when we share a bed, we are siblings still, not husband and wife, nor lovers at play_. The watchful expression Loki had so often worn while Thor haltingly took his place in such conversations told him that his face was as glass, thoughts on clear display. And yet Thor had never voiced them. He had always told himself he didn’t need to give Loki reasons more to laugh at him.

_But then, perhaps you were only afraid that if you said it aloud—_

“They make rather the pair, don’t they?” Freyja’s hand had come to rest upon his forearm again, though her words had been directed towards Jane. Her eyes, on the other hand, fixed themselves firmly upon where Freyr and Loki had chosen to swim lazy circles about one another. “Enough to have a girl’s heart beating just a little too fast,” she added, silky in her low thoughtfulness, and Thor laid a firm hand over hers.

“I believe we’ve already discussed the fact that my thrall is not to be passed about the palace like a party favour.”

The dark eyes held deep amusement where they challenged his own. “You were not always such a prude, Thor.” The hand upon his cheek held easy warmth, the way she patted him there sisterly. “But I will tell him that Járnsaxa is yours alone.”

His stomach twisted in upon itself. “That is not precisely what I meant.”

“I understand.” Thor did not say that was what he was afraid of. Rather he held his silence as Freyja leaned back in her chair, arms crossed beneath her breasts so that the swell of them rose high. Cocking her head, she studied him critically. “Actually, I do keep meaning to tell you something. Your mother, years ago, made me a tapestry.”

“Oh?”

“I thought you might be interested in seeing the piece. It shows the tale of the lady who lost her love to time.”

The dull rise of his excitement could not quite cover the sorrow his mother’s name would always engender. Still, he forced a faint smile, filed the information away to mention to Loki. He had always been far more informed about the nature of Frigga’s masterpieces. “I would like very much to see her work, in any sense.”

“And so you shall.” Her smile turned very sly, one hand light upon the low hem where the hem of her gown met the dusky shade of her skin. “Perhaps we can leave my brother to entertain Járnsaxa.”

“I’d rather not.”

Her laughter rang about the courtyard. “Oh, you precious thing!” she said, and rocked forward onto her feet, hands outstretched to his. “Come, we’ll drag them out by the ear. But I know you, my dearest Thunderer – I can recognise the tenseness in your every muscle.” Again, her expression took on a cunning tilt. “Let me take you to the training halls. I haven’t seen you fight in many a moon, and those two in the pool have given me quite a taste for beauty this morning, wouldn’t you agree?”

 

*****

 

The evening crept slow over the sea, the sun hanging for what seemed an eternity at the very last of its descent. Dinner had been passed in Freyja’s private rooms, sister pressed close to brother, though Freyr’s attention had been fixed often enough upon the one named Járnsaxa. At its conclusion Freyja had invited them all to a dance in the garden, but Thor had taken one look at the situation and judged it ill-advised. The coming fertility festival gave the air a potent heaviness he did not appreciate. Claiming exhaustion from their journey, Thor withdrew them all. Loki slipped away to return to their rooms, and though Thor did not trust him not to slip away again he still accompanied Jane to her own chambers. Standing upon their balcony, he could hear the sound of the revelries below. Out in the mighty harbours, ships shone like stars without sky-hung twins, the entire pulsing surface alight with life both above and below.

Jane’s silence had him shifting, hand light upon the balustrade. “Would you have preferred to go?”

“Oh…no, not really.” Thor thought he could hear the hint of a lie in there, though he’d never been particularly good at catching them, for all the practise life with Loki ought to have given him. Then she shifted, and sighed. “I’ve never been a party person, anyway. Though I am kind of curious about the whole thing. It’s…different, to the sort of festivals we have at home.”

“And what do you have?”

She blinked, then turned, leaning back against the railings. Raising one hand to press her hair back from her face, Jane began to chew thoughtfully upon her lower lip; it was a gesture he’d seen many times as she lost herself in her studies. “Well, it depends on where you come from, and where you live, and things. Like, in the States, we’ll have Thanksgiving, but that’s not a thing in the UK. But when I lived in Cambridge when I was a kid, I loved Bonfire Night. Which isn’t a thing in the US. And while lots of people have Christmas, for some people religion doesn’t even come into it. But then other religions have things like Hanukah and Diwali and Ramadan, and those are just some of the ones I hear about. There’s so many. More than I could ever tell you, at least in any detail.” She glanced up, the stars creating a galaxy anew in the dark of her eyes. “But then, I guess you’ll have the time to learn them all. If you want to.”

Thor did not know when he’d become so easy to wound with words, considering a life lived with Loki should have thickened his skin to stone. “Jane,” he reproached, and she held her impassive expression for a moment too long. Then she grimaced, allowed profound unhappiness to cross her features.

“I shouldn’t be angry. It’s not your fault.” Still she turned to the view again, the party-goers below engrossed in an ill-timed moment of hilarity. “So what’s your favourite festival from home?”

Given her earlier words, he couldn’t contain an uncomfortable shift. But then, he’d never been good with lies.

“Thor?” She’d turned again, stepping close, eyes narrowed in confusion. “What is it?”

“It’s…Iðunn’s festival. A harvest.”

Again her face flickered with disappointment, but her words proved oddly light. “These are the magic apples, right?”

“They are not magic,” he immediately rejoined, unable to curb his irritation. “I have been eating these apples since I was very young, Jane, and I still grow old.”

“Slower than we do,” she retorted, and he gave an exasperated hum.

“I am not mortal.”

“But has that always been true?” The challenge was matched by the way her hands moved to her hips, her mouth twisted into a line that did not become her at all. Any urge to fight left him quite suddenly.

“Jane, truly – what reason have I to lie to you?”

The reproachful look defused her anger, and she sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

It might have been better to let the subject drop altogether, he knew, and yet he could not let it lie. “They have no inherent magic,” he said, hoping his insistence was not so obvious as it seemed to his own ear. “It is…a gift. They are only harvested at that one time.”

“They taste good, I guess.”

“Very much so.” For a moment he became animated; it had not been a lie, to say it had long been his favourite festival. The memories it brought were those golden and warm, of laughter and play and autumn nights spent below the turning leaves of the harvest fields. “You give the apples to those you love best. For children, it is all just a matter of fun. For adolescents and adults, it can be…somewhat more.” And he gave a sharp laugh; these memories held the tang of iron and heat. “Many a duel has been called over the offer and acceptance of the golden apples.”

“Sounds a bit Helen of Troy to me,” Jane said with a raised eyebrow, and his own furrowed tight together.

“This reference, I do not understand.”

This seemed to surprise her, but then she just shrugged. “It started a war. Like, a ten year war.”

Thor blinked. “Yes, that would be accurate enough.”

The statement took a while to sink in. When it did, Jane started as if shocked by a bolt from the blue. “You guys had a ten year _war_ over apples?”

“Oh, no. It was closer to fifteen.” He couldn’t – and didn’t – bother to contain his guffaw, though he reached forward, cupped her cheek before she could pout. “But it is not usually so dramatic as all that. And some of us avoid the conflict simply enough.”

“I bet you had a list to work from, right?” she asked, wry, and he shook his head with a grin.

“If I did, it was very short. I always just gave mine to Loki.”

She stilled beneath his touch. “Your _brother_.”

“We were very close as children.”

Such a defence had been a mistake. In the silence Thor needed no powers of mind-reading to know that Jane thought upon the twins, of the way they no doubt sought each other’s company this night. But she spoke not of it, though her voice had turned dull. “You’re worried about what he’s doing right now, aren’t you.”

He swallowed, found his throat hard and unyielding. “I do not doubt he will slip away to the festival, when he decides to.” His eyes followed the flicker of lights downward, to the shadows in the gardens below. “Perhaps he already has.”

“You should go keep an eye on him.”

It was a challenge, but she surely had already known he would not stay. When he pressed his lips to her cheek, he found it unyielding and cool. “Good night, Lady Jane.”

 

*****

 

Loki had not chosen to go elsewhere, though he paid Thor precious little attention when he entered their shared chambers. Much as Thor might have preferred to be away from him, he found the idea of letting Loki out of his sight equally abhorrent. Instead he sat in a low chair, Mjölnir’s shaft held between his knees, polishing her head with slow repetitive strokes. It seemed only inevitable that Loki would be the one to break, looking over from where he lounged in the windowseat with a scowl.

“You are brooding.” When Thor glanced up, his expression melted into a devious grin. “Are you worried about that beast of yours?”

“Do not speak of Jane that way.”

That damned smile only grew wider. “I meant Mánagarm.” Yet when Thor did not respond, he drew up one leg, rested his chin upon the knee. “He is fine.”

Pausing in his circular motions, Thor stared at the seiðr-wrought runes worked into Mjölnir’s uru-flesh, unyielding and unbroken. “We should have brought him,” he murmured, low, and Loki only scoffed.

“Freyja would have had him in her menagerie in a flash. It’s only by dint of the fact I can speak for myself that _I_ haven’t wound up there.”

He could not look up, eyes still locked upon the words. _If he be worthy…_ “I would not allow it.”

“Yes, you’ve never been one to share your toys,” Loki observed, both caustic and thoughtful in memory. But Thor did not wish to be drawn into an argument; he only returned to the rhythmic working of the cloth over Mjölnir’s uru head.

“I do hope he is well,” he said, soft, and Loki snorted.

“Oh, don’t fret, so. He will be fine.”

“He will wonder why I leave him so often.”

This time Loki rolled his eyes so hard Thor could not imagine how they remained in his head. “Please. I know perfectly well how it is, and so does he – no creature can ever expect to have always the full attention of the golden prince of Asgard. One will always be forgotten over the fascinations of the newest addition.”

That did stop his hands, chest contracting tight and harsh around his heart. “That isn’t fair,” he said, flat, and glared at Loki. His brother only stared back, the feminine curve of his blue-skinned face set to stillness of stone.

“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”

There had never been time to speak of it, in the days after. Yet for all he had thought upon it ten thousand times or more, Thor still could not understand what Loki had meant that day in the observatory. The memory of it burned like a frost giant’s offensive touch: of how Loki had opened the Bifröst, had set the Casket to freeze the tendrils of its power like Yggdrasil carved of ice. The golden room had become a strange, cold place, as alien as the dim blue ice of Jötunheimr. Thor’s own breath had condensed before him with every word, every harsh breath. And yet Loki’s tears had been liquid and free, his eyes bleeding sorrow even as he tongue spit hate Thor could not understand even now.

_(“Don’t tell me it was that woman!”)_

“Do you wish to talk about it?” he asked, uncertain as snow in high summer. Loki leaned back against the arching frame of the window, lips twisted.

“With _you_? Don’t be absurd.”

Anger rose, unbidden and entirely natural; Mjölnir shivered in his hands, electricity sparking along every nerve, colouring his world in silver and red. “But is that not the issue that led us to this pass? That you and I never talked?”

“No.”

“Then what _is_ the issue?”

The demand was spoken in a voice hardly above a conversational level, but Loki turned his face away. Guilt and frustration declared war in his mind, and his hand was very tight about Mjölnir’s leather-wound haft as he lifted her from between his knees, set her down upon the floor.

“Where have you been all day?”

Loki cast about again, one eyebrow arched high. Even as Thor began to wonder with frustration why he kept to this feminised form even when they were alone, he drawled, “Oh, keeping tabs on your little Jötunn thrall, are we?”

“Please tell me you have not bedded someone you should not have.”

He regretted the words as soon as he had spoken them, even before Loki’s eyes flashed dangerously red, the colour of a berserker. “And what would you do if I had?” he demanded, and then chuckled. “Oh, don’t pull that face! Everyone was quite clear on the fact that I belong to you. I could have stripped naked and lain on my back with legs wide spread and arms open in invitation and they would have just stepped politely over me. No matter how pretty I am, it’s not worth the hammer to the head they’d be getting the next morning.”

“Good.” Yet he could not meet Loki’s eyes, his abdomen a mass of coiled snakes. “Though I do not doubt you found some other way to cause mischief.”

“You’d be disappointed if I didn’t.”

“Did you find out anything of interest?”

A faint scowl marred the loveliness of his features; Thor could not be sure if it was the subject matter or the loss of an argument that bothered him most. “As a matter of fact, no. The infinity stones have never been a popular topic, considering that they are either thought of as fanciful legend or beyond the reach of even the most advanced of seiðkona.” He paused, drummed his fingers upon one drawn-up knee. “As Freyja said, the Vanadís is not able to be distilled from the air, the aether was rumoured destroyed at Bor’s hand, the tesseract had been sealed away by Odin, Sullt and Hungr are in the hands of Hela, and then the time and reality stones have been lost so completely no-one can even be entirely sure they existed.”

“But if the other four have, they must have too.”

“One should think so.” Loki’s expression darkened, though Thor could not quite discern the nature of the thoughts that clouded it so. “I do believe that perhaps the tale of the wishes might be the place to begin, but even then I cannot be sure.”

“If only Mother were here.”

He regretted the words almost as soon as they were spoken, though Loki just waved a dismissive hand. “If wishes were horses, all fools would ride.” Then he curved his lips, wry and chill. “And if Mother were here, I do sincerely doubt we would be in this situation.”

It hurt just as much as the truth of the matter, to realise that he and Loki might never be able to speak of their mother without it being fraught or furious or both. “Why did you tell Thanos about them if you did not think they existed?” he said instead, and Loki rolled his eyes.

“I was quite aware that they _did_ – I had Sullt and Hungr myself, though I didn’t tell him so. But I knew where the tesseract was.”

“But the others?” he persisted, and Loki’s impatience had him slapping a hand against a taut thigh.

“I made no promises beyond the tesseract, and what knowledge I had. But there are rumours – and Freyja was right, the most common relating to the reality stone is that it was used in the cautionary tale of _be careful what you wish for_. It’s finding who made the wish that’s the hard part.”

“And what was the wish?” Loki only stared at him, unblinking; Thor released an explosive breath. “There are millions of wishes made every day!”

“And most of them silly, at that.” Pushing himself from the windowseat, he padded across the floor with the grace that followed him no matter the form he held. “Just think of the nature of the wishes being made tonight,” he muttered, taking a crystalline bowl from one of the small cupboards; Thor gritted his teeth.

“I would rather not.”

“Yes, well – not all of us can have your luck with getting what they want,” he said lightly, and took a carafe from the shelf. Pouring himself a bowl of a golden spirit, he raised it upon his palm, took a deep hit. Then he grinned to show all of teeth. “With all these fertility rites gathering steam all about us, you had best be careful next time you bed that mortal of yours. Between the Vanir seiðkona and your own preternatural fecundity, you could get her in pup just by _looking_ at her.”

His fists clenched, but he kept his expression pleasant. “I have no intention of bedding her.”

“Really?” Loki drained the remainder of his bowl in three burning swallows. Then he poured another, tilted it again in another sardonic toast. “Then why do you keep her?”

“She is my friend.” When Loki poured himself a third bowl, his fingers itched to take the bottle from him. “You might as well ask why I keep Sif around, if that’s how you see these things.”

“I thought that was for the entertainment value.” Abandoning the empty bowl now, Loki crossed the floor, threw himself down on one of the low chairs with a raised brow. “After all, there’s nothing quite like taking her to a tavern and waiting for one of the men within to look at her sword and ask why a maiden feels the urge to carry around such a large darning needle.”

“And it’s always so much the better when he unlaces his boot and offers her a sock with holes to mend.”

“He will have a few more holes needing stitching by the end of the evening.”

The laughter came light and easy with the fondness of shared memory. Then, in the quiet that settled awkward between them, the moment slipped away. Yet it seemed only natural to cross to him, to take the place at his side. Loki rolled his head to his brother, eyes very bright even in the dim light of the passing evening.

“If you were not tumbling the mortal wench last night, then whose bed did you pass the evening in?”

“She is not a wench, she is a woman.” One leg kicked out to catch Loki in the shin at the shrug that said _same difference_. “And I was with Jane. We simply…we only slept.”

“You _have_ lost your touch, haven’t you?” Leaning back ever further into the curve of the chair, Loki crossed one leg over the other; the long line of his skin was chased upwards by the curve of his tribal markings. Still, it was the smirk on his face that drew Thor’s attention. “Please do tell me you have actually given her a good thumping with at least one of your hammers.”

Thor turned his own eyes to the arching ceiling, tracing their geometric spirals. “I do not see how this is any of your concern.”

“Well, it’s embarrassing.” The matter-of-fact tone had him scowling, Loki’s sigh as theatrical as any heard upon a stage. “How could Midgard turn my brother into a blushing virgin?”

“Yes. It is definitely none of your concern.”

The rustling at his side made him glance over. In the cushion of the low chair Loki had rolled over onto his side, chin propped upon his palm, one leg curled up so that the curve of shoulder and hip converged low at his slim waist. “Oh, and we always used to share our secrets,” he purred, lips turned downward in an unhappy pout. “Tangled up together in our childhood bed.”

Thor turned away, voice low. “I’m beginning to believe I did not hear so many of your secrets as I thought.”

“Clever boy.” From the renewed rustling, Loki had rolled over again. “A few centuries too late, perhaps, but clever boy indeed.”

When they’d been but children, so often they had slipped from their shared chambers in the depths of night to their mother’s gardens. There they would lie upon their backs, shoulders pressed together, the night scent of grass rich and strange as they stared at the stars and wondered at a future filled with glory and kingship and promise. “What did they do to you?” he asked, strange and halting, eyes fixed upon an unfamiliar ceiling. “The Chitauri. Thanos.”

“Ah.” Loki’s voice held a coiled quality, light as any spring compressed flat. “I do believe that is none of _your_ concern.”

Thor could not look at him. “You want me to aid you in destroying Thanos. I believe it is entirely my concern.”

“Can you not just wish to protect your little brother?” The low-voiced chuckle held all the smooth edge of broken bloodied glass. “You always used to promise to do that. But then, you broke it often enough.”

Twisting onto his side, Thor glared hot and furious at his unmoving form. “I did no such thing!”

“Such a selective memory you have.” Without once looking at him, Loki waved a dismissive hand. “I am bored of this. Go play with your mortal. I am going to bed. You should too.”

“Loki.” This earned him nothing. With a fierce exhalation, Thor thrust himself forward, caught his weight upon his feet. Frustration had him pacing, arrhythmic and uneven. But days ago, all he had wanted was one last opportunity to speak to his lost and estranged brother. Loki had returned once more from the place between life and death, and yet he still remained so far beyond Thor’s grasping reach.

“Good night,” Loki said, cool and mocking, and Thor whirled around with hands clenched to tight fists, held in low readiness before his hips.

“I do not want to sleep.”

“I did not say you should.” Lazily his head rolled so that the crimson eyes could meet and take hostage his own, lips curled in a knowing grin. “Go, fuck her dear little mortal brains out.”

Blood pounded behind his eyes, vision flickering faintly scarlet. “I cannot,” he growled, hoarse and rough so that for a moment he thought only of great bears pounding blindly through the darkest of forests, and Loki laughed high and fluting.

“What, you worry about the consequences?” Clasping his hands over his abdomen, Loki stretched his whole body upwards between feet and shoulders, a drawn bow ready to fire. “Put it in her mouth, put it in her arse, have her bring you off with her hands or her breasts if you must be a prude about it. If you’re really the prodigious lover they say you are, surely you realise there is more to a tumble in the sheets than a cock shoved up a cunt.”

“ _Stop_.”

“Why?” Loki sank back into the open palm of the chair, closed his eyes in unconcern. “You’re wound tighter than Fandral’s moustache. Go, work it off. She’s open to you.”

“I will not do wrong by her.”

The sound of his voice scratched over the air, nails over glass, and Loki glanced over. “What is with this ridiculous notion of honour and nobility?” he demanded, scathing. “She _wants_ you. And you want her. Go.”

“No.”

For the first time Thor could taste the frustration building beneath his brother’s Jötunn skin, could feel the chill pressure of Loki’s fury against his own. “This can’t be one of the ways you’ve changed. Midgard cannot have done this to you.”

“Would you stop talking about how Midgard has turned my brains to mush?”

“I didn’t say that it had.” The smile that so briefly tilted his lips upward now held all the memory of a shared childhood. “That theory would only work on the supposition you had a brain to begin with.”

It was not the insult that hurt. In the silence that remained, Loki huffed an impatient sigh.

“If you are so very concerned about not being able to stop yourself from sticking it in her, sheathed or not, I _do_ have herbal remedies I might prepare. I will give you some if you will just—”

“It is not the heightened fertility of the festival that is the problem!” he shouted, and Loki scowled.

“Do not try to tell me that your _affection_ for the little chit holds you back,” he spat, and Thor raised his chin, skin and words both very cold.

“It is.”

The narrowing of his eyes reminded him of the way a warrior’s attention could focus entirely upon the edge of the blade raised above their body in an unavoidable killing blow. “You’ve bedded wenches without number. Why won’t you just go take a tumble with her?”

“Because they were aware that it was but one night, or two. They did not expect me to stay beyond that. Nor did they need me to do so.”

“I am sure she would take offense to being thought of as _weak_.”

Disgust burned in his mouth like bile. “Love is not a weakness.”

“How can you _love_ her? You scarcely _know_ her!”

For the first time Thor could hear clear disbelief in Loki’s tone – and the rawness of it felt too bloody to be anything but honesty. “She is my friend,” he said, slow, “and I would not risk that for mere physical pleasure. Not when I cannot yet know what more I have to offer her.”

Loki turned his face away again, words flat and utterly without emotion. “You are a fool.”

“You’ve called me worse.”

“And I will again.” One hand rose, waved him away. “I do not care for your moral quandaries, Thor. Just leave me be.”

Thor did not even think before he strode over, catching that arm about the narrow wrist. There was no chance for Loki to protest before Thor yanked him rudely to his feet; he staggered under the momentum, almost fell when he snatched his hand back. When he looked up, his eyes blazed like the deepest fires of burning Múspellsheimr.

“Do _not_ touch me.”

“Why not?” Thor had always been too quick to snatch up the nearest weapon to hand when battle called him to arms. “You are my thrall, yes?”

The darkening of his eyes made them appear as blood leeched of all oxygen. When he stepped forward, Thor could feel the burn of ice radiating from the deepening indigo of his lined and runed skin.

“You do not wish to play this game with me, Thunderer,” he hissed, and Thor returned the venom with a humourless smile.

“We have been playing these games since before we could even remember them.”

Loki’s head tilted, the long dark hair moving over his skin like the half-heard whispers of the Allfather’s ravens. “Not this one,” he purred as he took a step closer. Thor did not retreat.

“And what _is_ this game?”

This rough-spoken question earned him no answer. Loki only stared in open challenge, did not protest when Thor stepped forward. He only stepped back. In this fashion Loki allowed Thor to walk him backwards until his spine rested up against the wall, their faces but a second’s lunge apart.

“What game are you playing with me now, Loki?” he demanded, breathless as though he’d run a marathon after winning a war. Loki’s lips twisted, neither frown nor smile.

“What do you care? Even when I win, I still always lose.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” When he had no reply, Thor slammed one palm against the wall beside his head. “Answer me!”

Loki gave him nothing. All that stood between them was that crimson stare, burning hot in a face both familiar and not. Thor’s hand clasped tight on his neck before he even realised he’d raised it. The instinct driving the motion made no sense, for all the familiarity it bore to the gesture of tenderness so long between them. Perhaps his warmth might take the cold from him, changing Loki back to the way he was.

_But then this is how he always was, inside. This is your brother. This is **Loki**_.

Anger. Frustration. The urge to strike. All rose in him, and he knew that not a one was worthy of either of them. Thor turned away in disgust, but Loki’s laughter followed him like a brand.

“You were not always such a coward.”

A roar ripped free of his lungs, forcing him back around. Though Thor wrenched him from the wall, Loki did not come easily this time. Despite his lesser mass, Loki had always possessed a wiry strength; many a warrior had underestimated him in close quarters. For all the rumours that swirled around saying that Loki only ever won his battles through trickery or outright seiðr, he had taken down more than one opponent with leverage and the judicious application of force.

But he could not compete forever against Thor’s fury, or his sheer power. Breathing hard, Thor lorded both over him; Loki lay on his back, arms spread cruciform, the flesh between thumb and forefinger pressed hard against the pulse of his wrist where they were pinned to the floor.

“Yield.”

Loki blinked, expression triumphant despite his supine position. “Why?”

“Because you lose.”

Relaxing all the long muscles of his body, Loki’s chuckle rose from deep in his throat. “Ah, but maybe I’ve won.”

“By _losing_?” he asked, incredulous, and Loki’s laughter bounced from ceiling and wall to ring discordant in his mind.

“You were never very good at this game,” he whispered, and Thor leaned close as if to bite the venomous words from his lips so he might spit them back in his brother’s face.

“The problem with your games, Loki, is that you keep changing the rules.”

“That _is_ what makes them exciting.” Loki rattled his wrists in the manacles of Thor’s hands. “And you do know how I love my little tricks.”

Thor’s eyes followed the movement, throat thick and heavy. “Do I need to chain you again?” he said, more to himself than aloud. Loki’s laughter gurgled low in his throat.

“Why? I am already your dog. Your willing bitch.”

An upward thrust of hips brought their groins into sudden contact, which Loki held for a second too long. At the press of hardness over his own Thor gasped, stilled. Loki let his hips sink slowly downward, his eyes hooded and smiling.

“Oh. You did not consider this.” He arched his neck upward, whispered against his skin: “Or did you?”

Thor’s chest hitched, struggling for another breath even as a weight felt to crush it impossibly from below. He had won this battle and yet he was unable to move. The searching eyes held him still, moth to killing flame. And it was only his brother, his brother in this alien, feminised form. It was but the work of a moment to overlay him with the memory of a sleek body, pale-skinned with those watchful eyes coloured the same as his seiðmaðr aura. But one or the other, it did not matter. All were Loki.

And now only Loki lay beneath him, curious and cunning and calm.

“No,” he whispered, and Loki thrust upward again.

“Oh, _yes_.”

How his own hips wished to jerk forward, pressing Loki into the floor. Harsh breath strangled his every thought, his mind a white canvas, his blood heated and wanted. Only the  knock on the door held him back. His head jerked sideways, eyes wild. Jane, perhaps. But then it was opening, not a word coming from behind or before. She would not, she _could_ not—

But it was only Freyr who arched an eyebrow high, arms crossed over his chest in clear amusement. Thor couldn’t feel surprise at his presumption. Every chamber in his sister’s hall he would see as his own; ever since they were children and he had been given Álfheimr, Freyr had chosen to walk where he pleased. Even as they lay unmoving he stepped forward, bowed forward from the waist to bring his face into line with Thor’s. “I am not interrupting, I trust?”

Thor pressed back onto his heels, straightened; despite the half foot of height he had on Freyr, the other man only smiled. “Of course not, my friend.” Setting his jaw, he brushed down at where his tunic had rucked itself up, the uncomfortable heat in his trousers thankfully beginning to subside. “Járnsaxa and I were…training.”

Freyr’s eyes moved sideways. The slow smile across his smooth features took on an animalistic hint as he took in where Loki sprawled upon the floor, one knee hitched upward and arms lazily laid about his head. “She seems to have a talent for such.”

“One might assume so,” Thor said, not bothering to keep the hard note from the words. One finger tapped his pursed lips, as if holding back a smile, and then Freyr shrugged.

“And it is appropriate, given it is her talents that have brought me here.” With another knowing glance towards Loki, he said simply, “I would borrow your thrall for the evening, if I might.”

The flicker of red over his vision brought with it the taste of iron upon his tongue. “I thought Freyja told you that this was impossible.”

“My sister doesn’t generally hold much with the impossible.”

“No.” The urge to punch the knowing glint from Freyr’s eyes, to wrench them from their sockets and crush them beneath his heel, did not preclude him from offering a flat smile. “No, she does not.”

Yet Freyr had already turned his attention from Thor, fixed again upon the loose-limbed body still spread so invitingly before them both. “I will treat her kindly.” His eyes flickered over the bruises forming upon Loki’s wrists, the heavy-lidded smile he wore, and then he chuckled. “Or roughly, if she so pleases. I have no interest in harming her, no matter the bloodlines she descends from. I have always thought it rather foolish, to lay the blame upon an entire people for the actions of a few.”

“And yet you would take advantage of that fact in order to find your pleasure in her flesh,” Thor rasped, harsh and heavy, and Freyr turned to him with clear surprise writ upon his clear and lovely features.

“Do you not do the same?”

“It was her choice. A debt to repay.”

The excuse sounded weak to his own ears even before Freyr scoffed, waved a hand. “Surely there could have been some other way, if that is your personal feeling on the matter.”

“Not with the realms the way they are.” Thor’s eyes fixed upon Loki, his heart an aching mass of torn and bleeding flesh. “This one never belonged on Jötunheimr. The Norns knew that.”

Loki had stilled, his crimson eyes gone distant and hard. “And so they gave her to you,” Freyr mused at his side, and then chuckled. “I am not here to argue politics with you, Thor – especially as Vanaheimr only followed Asgard’s lead in this particular matter. I came only to ask a favour.”

“Then why do you remain when I have already told you no?”

“You make a valid point.” But the evaluating expression he wore had Mjölnir thrumming in the distance, Thor’s palm opening and closing in indecision. The dark eyes never left his own. “If I have offended you, then I offer my most sincere of apologies.”

“I accept.”

Freyr gave a low bow. “Good eve to you both.”

The door closed, and Thor turned back, heavy-limbed and strange, a walker in some unknown dream. Upon his back, Loki slid his limbs across the floor, then propped his chin upon his laced fingers. “Well, well,” he murmured. “So protective of my non-existent honour, is my big brother.”

Thor studiously did not look at him. “They have no understanding of what gift they ask to be given,” he said, flat, and Loki laughed.

“ _Gift_?” With a dancer’s ease he flowed to his feet, but the hand he passed from throat to groin was as harsh as an executioner’s lash. “It is the body of a monster. I have no particular use for it, save as a shell to hold my spirit until I can shuck it off again.”

“And so you’d let anyone have you.”

Loki snorted at Thor’s empty tone, stepped close. “Pleasure is pleasure,” he snapped, and then he let his words soften, or perhaps take on a new edge entire. “And it has its benefits. Its…little idiosyncrasies, as it were.”

The memory of their earlier grappling upon the floor trembled upon his skin, even before Loki pressed up against his side. “What are you talking about?” he said, and Loki’s hand rose to press long fingers over the stiff line of his jaw.

“Giving as well as taking.” When he tilted his head, it matched the sly curve of his smile. “I say I’m female like this, but that’s just secondary appearance.”

“ _Loki_.”

He could not say anything more, mind and heart aching and tangled. Loki just nodded, one hand slipping about the back of his neck. Thor did not resist when Loki drew him close, foreheads touching, skin sparking where it met. Thor glanced upward, lost himself in that knowing crimson gaze. “Take your little friend Mánagarm,” he murmured, fingertips like soft kisses rippling over his skin. “You call it male, and certainly it presents itself that way, but should Mánagarm wish to bear its own children, it could do so. And then sire another brood upon a willing body.”

Thor’s own hands remained at his sides, no matter how they itched to rise, to draw his brother close against him. “You are saying that…what? You possess the qualities of both male and female no matter how you present yourself?”

“Yes.”

“In this form…”

“And the other,” he completed impatiently, even as his fingers wound in the hair at the nape of neck. “Though not as an Asgardian. I am sure Odin made sure his stolen son would at least appear normal on the outside, if not the inside.” He leaned close, breath tickling at the lobe of his ear. “I always did have rather too natural a talent with Mother’s skills.”

The desire of it arrowed straight to his groin; how he wanted Loki to come further yet, to close his teeth over his skin and _bite_. “Are all Jötnar this way?” he asked instead, and Loki’s hand came close about his waist, drawing their hips together.

“To the best of my limited knowledge, yes.” And he chuckled, utterly without humour. “Why else do you think we are found to be such exotic bedmates? Even as but one individual we can supply the best of all worlds.”

Thor closed his eyes, trapped upon the cusp of some unknown change even as he scrabbled for purchase at the edge of all he had ever known to be true. “But…the warriors. Are they too…”

Loki’s breath whispered over his skin, light and lilting. “Call it a kind of sexual dimorphism, if you will. The larger prefer to display what the Aesir call their more male characteristics; the smaller like myself often enough appeal to those who wish a more feminine aspect to their concubines and conquered treasures. In truth neither matters much to the Jötnar themselves – it is only their need to seek resources from other worlds that force them to be what in spirit they are truly not.”

If he opened his eyes now, he thought he might just see his heart held in his brother’s hands, ripped open and bleeding. Certainly his chest felt so empty that it could not possibly be held within it any longer. “ _Loki_.”

“The truth does hurt, does it not?” The touch of his skin was cool, gentle against his damp cheek. “Why else would I have preferred my lies, all these years?”

 Silence only held a brief moment, and then Thor’s voice broke.

“I do not know what you want.”

“Fair enough.” Loki’s forehead pressed to his again, arms rising about his brother’s body. “Neither do I.”

Thor’s own grasp trembled, though his fingers dug deep into Loki’s skin. “We should go to bed.”

“Yes.” His sigh tasted of winter and death. “We should.”

Thor’s mind had disconnected itself from his body, or so he told himself. Every inch of his skin danced with unseen plasma fire, as he pushed back, allowed Loki’s hand to fall away from his hair. The easy removal of his clothing was an invitation already accepted. His own hands moved steady over his laces and buckles, shedding his own attire like a second skin that could only constrict and restrain the creature beneath. The warm air from the opened balcony doors breathed over his naked form like a lover’s caress; the faint sound of laughter was the distant music of a world beyond their own. His eyes were for Loki alone: blue and brilliant in the dimming light of an alien night.

“Shall we bathe, then?” he murmured, one eyebrow arched. Thor stepped closer. Had he had any beverage from Loki’s hand, he might have thought himself to have been drugged. Yet his body moved with the same ease it did in battle, every muscle at his explicit command, even as he did not recognise a single one of his actions.

_The true self has always been buried beneath expectation_.

The mere motion of hands over his skin made all sensation electric. His own heart stuttered as Thor pushed a sudden pulse of lightning through Loki’s skin, chuckling when he caught the quickening of his heartbeat in the curve of his throat.

“I did wonder if that would work,” he murmured. Loki tilted his head, eyes half-lidded and lips curved.

“Oh?” Sinuous and serpentine, he pressed himself close, one hand trailing over hip while the other teased lightly at the place where skull met spine. Thor shivered to feel the whisper of breath over lip and cheek. “So you wish me to be like your Mánagarm? Drooling and darling, pressing myself all over you?”

He turned his face away. “I wish you to be _Loki_.”

Long fingers twisted in his hair, pulled tight enough to hurt. “Oh, it does so amuse me when you try to use your words.”

“Perhaps then I will not.”

The challenge of that smile ran hot through his veins, setting every muscle alight, calling them to war. He followed willingly, tongue darting out to lap over the skip of a pulse, to trace downward so he might begin to map the lines over collarbone and chest. Even in this form he did not have breasts as would an Asgardian maid, but still the skin about his nipples had a distinct swell. Thor forged a path about one, took it between his lips, sucked hard. Loki shuddered, and then stiffened entire when Thor pressed his tongue against it, expelled a short sharp shock. Thor smiled against his skin, raised his other hand to catch the opposite nipple between forefinger and thumb, twisting it lightly as he called the lightning once more.

Loki caught his face between his hands, drew him upright. “I told you to go to your woman,” he whispered against his lips, eyes cool crimson.

The shiver through him held this time the weight of a condemned man strung up for his guilt. But it was _Loki_ before him. Always Loki. He could not see how he might take his hands away now.

And so Thor did not say anything. To speak even a single word now would be the end of it, and he understood that better than anyone. Instead he offered only a kiss. The press of lips could be little else other than soft or chaste. It was nothing more than they had ever shared as brothers, as children.

But it became something new entire when he went to his knees. Above him Loki drew a breath, slow and unsteady. With hands upon his thighs Thor gave no pause, gentling them apart. What he found seemed hairless and strange; no such smoothness ought to be in such a place. But already he could make out a swelling, skin darkening with the congestion of blood. When he pressed a hand over it, it was to feel the tremor of flesh within.

“This is what you meant,” he said, soft, glancing upward. “When you said you were both.”

“Only sensible in a land made of snow and ice.” The scorn still held true, even with the tremor of his words. Yet Loki had always been one to push a matter beyond its limits, especially if courage was in question. A hand moved down, slipped easy past where Thor knelt before him. It was a sheath, of a sort; the skin could be gentled aside, allowing for the emergence of the cock buried within. When it worked free it rose sharply, already hard, the tip weeping fluid of a faintly silver tinge.

Thor did not turn his attention to it right away. Instead he looked again to what the parted skin revealed. There were no testicles that he could see, but a curious hand probed behind the root of the upward straining cock. His own length twitched as fingertips brushed over the wetness of a quim’s folded beginnings. Above, a gasp jerked hips forward, abdomen tightening as Loki doubled over. Without a thought towards tradition or propriety, Thor pressed a reverent kiss to the base, then opened his mouth so that he might press his tongue against its flesh. Mouthing upwards, he let his fingers lead so he might draw the covering foreskin back, though the stiffening of the cock had done much of the work itself. He lingered but a moment before the tip. Then he took it into his mouth.

“ _Thor_.”

Drawing back, Thor looked up. Perhaps it had gone too far. But even then he could not say what _this_ even was. Yet nothing in his brother’s face seemed to suggest he wished to stop. He looked down like the prince he was; his eyes were but a sliver of red, disappearing, a wound stitched closed by the sweep of his eyelashes.

Lips teased along the shaft, again. When his finger probed behind, he found that everything was hairless between. Loki’s voice was little more than a purring moan as Thor moved fingers over skin, finding it oddly warm within; Loki’s moan became a sharp gasp at the dip of a fingertip, the caress along the softness of it. When it withdrew, it was upon a shared sigh.

Mouthing along the vein, Thor left trails of saliva upon the cool skin. Only when he curved around again did he once more draw the head into his mouth. This time Loki’s hands only tightened on his hair, drew him closer. While Thor had often enjoyed such pleasures between the thighs of a willing maid, he had never done as such for another male; he had no real idea of how to proceed except by memory of how he himself had enjoyed it before. He simply gave over to the slide of a tongue and lips, the sucking in of cheeks. Without experience he could not pull it far into his throat. Yet the shaking he felt where his palms cupped hip and thigh whispered that perhaps it would have been too much for them, in the end.

Thor drew back, gazed up. “Will you lie down?”

His voice felt hoarsened, rough; there was no command in it, only sudden desire. Yet Loki obeyed with wordless acquiescence, sliding down to the floor. Spread upon the floor, Thor could see that his actions were hardly romantic. But the music from the water gardens below was a tinkling symphony, the voices like bellbirds at play. Thor again gave over to the gentle spreading of thighs. With cheek pressed against one, he pressed a kiss to the other, taking back in return a shudder from Loki’s body entire. Hands moved up over the hitching stomach, tracing the markings like the growth of a world tree, held entire and complete within his own body: a destiny now writ by his own hand.

When he lowered his head again it was to savour the taste of Loki upon his tongue. Pressing into the once-hidden folds, now opening before him like unfurled petals, Thor found both chill, and warmth; everything about it seemed as contradictory as Loki himself, for how could a temperature have a taste? But then it seemed no matter, for it _did_ , and Thor could not stop chasing it further. Pressing his tongue deeper within, he grinned to feel the tremor of thighs about his head, Loki’s back arching in time with low moan. One hand shifted, cupping underneath his ass, pressing upwards. The other moved between his spreading legs, thumb pressed against a throbbing small heat that could only be his clit.

A gasp, then a shudder heralded his coming; Thor tasted it from the shivering muscles, tongue pressed deep into the tremors of his quim. When he drew back, the slap against his cheek told him the cock remained as hard as his own. With a faint smile, he traced it ridgings, gave Loki a sly grin.

“Norns,” he murmured, and pressed a kiss to its leaking head. Loki threw his head back, spine arched like a drawn bow.

“ _Yes_.”

Rising to his hands and knees, Thor loomed easy above the wrecked beauty of Loki below. There had been no shift in his form, this faintly female Loki – but still everything of the brother Thor had known his entire life lay spread before him. With a sigh Loki arched his back, the faint curves of his chest rising; the loosened hair spread like dark matter around him, making himself the endless centre upon which Thor’s universe turned.

A hiss escaped Loki’s taut throat when Thor passed a hard over the hardness of his nipples. Feral, now, Thor descended to press a kiss against his throat that was more a closing of teeth. One hand curved the inward slant of waist, even as the other anchored his neck, and then the first curled about his cock. Hips rose in lazy thrust, jittering to a halt when Thor’s fingers slid into him. Loki’s hands rose, clenched tight about Thor’s upper arms; the nails dug into his flesh with all the burn of his crimson gaze.

“We cannot.”

Thor shook his head. “But this, we can.”

With a savage grin he crooked his fingers deep inside the wetness of his quim. The other hand he kept at Loki’s throat, the thumb rubbing soft over the corner of his jaw. Leaning close, Thor pressed lips over the pulse, bit hard. Loki gasped, and then he _howled_ ; Thor had sent a pulse of his elemental energy from one hand to the next. It shot through him like grounded lightning, forcing his eyes very wide, neck arched.

“Can you taste the storm?” Thor whispered, loosing it again; when he pressed his lips to the dampness of Loki’s cheeks, he found ozone and salt, burning and bitter. Another pulse, and Loki’s eyes clenched shut.

“I _am_ the storm,” he whispered, and said no more even as his body twisted and turned in Thor’s hands. Lowering his head, Thor licked slow and long from root to tip, and laughed as he danced plasma over the skin of his brother.

When it came, Thor found Loki’s spill cool and lovely. Where it pooled in the indrawn hollow of his abdomen, Thor leaned down, lapped gently. Loki shivered above him even as Thor trembled at the taste of ice and winter upon his tongue. One hand dropped lower, curved around his cock; before the lazy hooding of eyes, it moved to a motion both hard and fast, pulling him insistent and quick to his own ending.

“ _Lo_ —”

Loki snapped upright like a striking snake; his hand closed over Thor’s mouth, tight and teasing. “I believe the word you were looking for is _Járnsaxa_.” And his tongue traced along his jaw, where his lips chased the light press of teeth before he whispered against his ear, “We can’t have you screaming out your brother’s name in the middle of a fertility festival.”

Thor’s eyes darkened.  “Then let us have no names,” he growled, and jerked his cock hard.  “Let us be as we are.”

Loki’s hand dropped to crush over it, cool against insistent heat. “Brothers?” he said, coy and condemning, and Thor pressed their forehead together.

“ _Everything_.”

And he laughed, even as he began to work Thor’s hand to his own pace. “You are such a fool,” he whispered against Thor’s lips, and bit down upon the lower one. Thor ripped backward, blood dripping down his chin as he bared his teeth, grinning like a madman.

“And you always knew it.”

Under Loki’s clever guidance, with the storm still sparking in his veins and drying upon his brother’s skin, Thor did not take long. One final thrust against the stickiness of drying spill upon taut abdomen, and Thor added his own. Then they crumpled to the floor, wordless and weary, where they curled about one another as they had as children. As always, Loki rose first.

Thor rolled over to follow the light movement, noting the way symmetrical lines curled about his spine and rose over the swell of taut buttocks. “Where are you going?”

Loki tossed his hair, gave a dour look over one shoulder. “I am a mess.”

“I like you this way.”

“Of course you do.”

Loki then turned away, the swing of the swell of his hips all but a crooked finger. A storm rekindled, Thor rose from the floor in one swift movement, his cock rising further yet. It stiffened only further as he worked a lazy hand over the hardening length, padding across the room like a great cat upon the hunt. A moment later and then both hands were upon Loki, thrusting him up against the wall so hard that his entire body shuddered with the impact.

“Brute,” he hissed, and Thor pressed his teeth against the hollow of his throat where a pulse jumped quicksilver fast.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, and Loki’s chuckle was high and halting.

“Liar.”

Thor traced the line across his collarbones with his teeth, let his tongue trail slick between them. “Which is more your domain than mine, I believe.”

Loki jerked his head aside, and then turned back with blazing eyes. “Do not be jealous, Thor, it does not become you,” he said, and even in his anger his desire was a demanding thing. “You have such lovely strengths of your own, with that thick skull and the even _thicker_ shaft of your hammer—”

One hand slammed down over his mouth; the other hand went without thought over his throat. The motion held a vague memory, that of the breaking of an illusion, the passing of the guard. But they were alone here. And nothing lay between them save for the armour they imagined, cracked and bleeding though it always had been.

It was all too easy to thrust his hips forward, sheathing his cock between the slippery heat of his thighs. Loki’s eyes burst open, throat closing on some word held back. Yet before Thor could think to tease it from him Loki lunged forward, caught Thor’s fingers between his lips. Teeth grazed light over skin, the cool of his saliva raising shivers like waves down his spine. The thought of that tongue in other places was akin to seeking out pleasure like embers, every thrust and press of it beating them to blazing inferno.

Thor could angle himself differently, thrust himself up into the clenching heat that so brushed over the slick skin of his cock. He could take Loki by the waist, hitching him up before sliding him down. He could even turn his brother, parting the cheeks of his ass and finding welcome muscle opening for him there.

But Thor could not do it. The haze of dreaming desire had taken them both deep, but even so close to drowning Thor knew his own limits – and those of Loki too, even if his brother had never cared much for consequence when chaos beckoned. This was too much, too close.

_Too soon_.

After they had spilled against the wall, they stumbled together into the bathroom; the very motion of it felt far too similar to a thousand and more remembered nights of staggering drunken streets together, seeking some place to lay their sloshing heads. This was a different kind of drunkenness, though one that found the cool flow of water over their heads just as soothing. Yet even as they pressed together they sought no further release. It became nothing more than the pressure, the passing of hands over skin, made slick with soap.

Loki left the water first, crossing the chamber to collect drying sheets for them both. And then they lay down in the bed together, naked yet. Side by side, there was nowhere left to look but to another.

Even under that searching crimson regard Thor could feel no regret. He knew there ought to be. But in the ease of this moment, he could not take any of it back. There was something too simple and open between them now, and he could feel its loss even before it had gone. Because it would leave them both. Already he could feel his brother drawing away from this precipice. They had not yet fallen. Loki would not allow it.

And Thor would not jump alone.

Yet he felt them teetering upon this edge, and it seemed only but natural to reach out for him, to lay his fingers upon the delicate bones of cheek and jaw. “Loki.”

“Thor.” His own hand moved in soft play over Thor’s features, as if tracing Jötunn markings he did not have, that they did not share. The expression on his face had turned hazy, contemplative, as soothing as the motion of his fingers. “Go to sleep.”

“So we can just pretend this was a dream?”

The contortion of expression was only but so brief. Then it was gone, and Loki’s mask was as perfect as it had ever been. “That is what nights are for, yes?”

“I shall ask the sun, then, to never rise again.”

This time he smiled, and it cleaved his heart in twain. “Always such a fool.” The words felt whispered from the fingertips that so carefully brushed sweat-soaked hair back from a damp brow, scarlet eyes turned away. “Mani cannot ride his chariot through the sky forever.”

Thor caught his chin, turned his face to his own. “We might, in his place.”

“Fool.” And it was fondly enough given, but even as Loki extinguished the lamps and Thor allowed the darkness to chase him into sleep, he could not help but fear the morning. He’d begun this madness looking for his dead brother, and could not be sure what kind of life they were twisting between them now.


	11. 2.5: Open Stance

“It’s…actually kind of scary. Watching you fight. You know that, right?”

Raising his face from the towelling, Thor was unable to control his surprise. In return she gifted him a crooked smile. Yet despite the uncertainty of the expression Jane was lovely in her borrowed Vanir gown, the light silks embroidered with golden threads that shimmered with every whisper of the folds in the light breeze. A page stood silent at her side, and her hands tightened over the book already pressed hard against her chest.

Thor swallowed against a dry throat. He’d only downed a carafe of cool water scant seconds before. “I thought you were with Freyja.”

“I was.” Her feet shuffled, almost soundless in the her slippers. “But then she had a meeting she couldn’t miss, and they said you were training, so I went and had a poke around in one of her libraries. I’m on my way back to her now, but I just…I wanted to say hi.”

Now her chin thrust stubbornly forward; the gesture had an almost childish air, and he suspected she did not even realise she had made it. Laughter bubbled somewhere low in his gut, but he kept it to himself. Instead he turned, discarded the towel. When he turned back, the flare of her eyes reminded him suddenly that he was stripped to the waist, sheened with sweat. Her clever fingers closed tighter still upon a tome that even he knew to be both ancient and precious. Gladness and guilt alike flushed already warmed skin, and he found he could not meet her eyes.

“Is…something wrong?”

Even with his eyes wide open, he felt blind as he groped for a fresh shirt. “A great many things,” he muttered, too short. He wished he could snatch the words back even before he heard the faint hurt of her reply.

“Yeah, well. Stupid question.” Even the fine craftsmanship of the slippers could not muffle the uneasy shift of her feet. “I should probably leave you to it. Freyja’ll be waiting.”

“Will you be all right?”

“Yes, I think so.” And how his heart ached to know that it would not be so simple, had she but an inkling of what had happened the night before. With his back turned, Thor slipped the shirt on, her voice half-muffled through the action. “I mean, I’m going to have to focus on the space stone so she doesn’t get suspicious about us being after the others, but…if I can get anything more on the time and reality stones, I will.” When he chanced a glance backward, Jane bit her lip. “I can ask her about your mother. If that’s okay with you.”

“Why would it not be?”

The words had been too casual, and they both knew it. The guilt in her own eyes paled in comparison that which roiled in his own. He’d always had the feeling that Jane had wished she could do more to assuage his grief, but that was nothing to what he had done. Even now he stood before her, knowing he could not give her what she wanted, what he had thought he wanted too. And then how easily he had fallen into Loki’s embrace, their separation bringing them back together in ways he could not have imagined.

He closed his eyes, knew himself for a coward. “Jane, I do not blame you for her death.”

“I know.” Somewhere, in the distance, he could hear the clash of wood, a ripple of laughter. “Does Loki?”

It was a question he had only ever asked himself. The lines of his hand ran deep, even through the thick calluses over palm and pad. “I do not believe so,” he murmured, and Jane’s faint chuckle held no humour at all.

 “Does he even know?”

“I…should think so.” Loki had never been the type to let the details slip him by, even if they would ultimately become that which wove the noose he would hang himself with. “He was concerned that…that she had suffered. I imagine he would have availed himself of the facts, one way or another.”

It hurt to look at her now. Yet even when he dared now, it was only to see a still face in profile. Her eyes had wandered somewhere far distant, hands cradling yet the ancient Vanir text she no doubt would ask Freyja to translate for her. “She would have been so much more use to you right now, compared with me,” she whispered, and for the first time Thor pushed aside his own guilt and focused upon her own – one that which she by no means deserved.

“Jane.” The slim shoulder stiffened beneath his touch, relaxed as she turned her face upward in the fashion of a flower seeking the sun. Biting back everything else, Thor thought only of her. “This is your time. This is your chance. Do not throw that away for what is past.” Troubled as her expression was, he caught the vestiges of a smile behind it. With great effort he summoned his own, leaned down so that his voice was but a whisper between them. “Let your brilliance guide you ever forward. It is enough to illuminate the universe entire – if you let it.”

Her head began to move from one side to the next, but the hope in her crooked smile was a dagger in his faithless heart. “You really think so?”

“What I believe is irrelevant.” With palms pressed to her cheeks, he stilled the motion, nodded. “ _You_ are the one who makes it so.”

At first she said nothing at all. Then she laughed, as light as the distant sound of blunted metal meeting shield. “And they say your brother has the silver tongue.” But the mockery of it had a gentle lilt, her smile muted yet somehow brilliant yet. “Thank you. Again. _Always_. I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you.”

They were surrounded now by the humid weight of a Vanir port-city, and yet his skin prickled as if remembering the cool press of a New Mexico night, the faint heat of a small fire popping and murmuring between them. “You would have gotten here on your own,” he said, and it was not a lie. “But as you have said to me more than once: what are friends for?”

In his arms she felt impossibly fragile, as if he tried to catch snow with hands made of flame. He drew away too quick, perhaps, if the faint line on her brow spoke to anything meaningful. Yet he felt if he held her a moment too long it would be to leave her unmade. Yet even as she turned away, he could not yet let her go.

“Jane?”

She had barely reached the page who waited ever-patient at the door of the changing chambers. “What?”

There were so many things he should have said – now, then, and everywhere in between. She would be his friend, and he knew that would not be easily changed. But he had let her believe there could be more. The truth trapped itself in his throat, held down by something more than guilt.

“I will see you soon,” he said, wan, and her frown held a faint confusion.

“Sure.”

A hollow feeling dogged every step he took away from her. For not the first time he felt the isolation of his position; he had never been one to take his strength from standing alone, not as his brother had. For centuries he had been in near-constant companionship with Volstagg, Fandral, Hogun, Sif. All but one were now far away, and by his own choice. Yet for all they were his truest comrades in arms, he did not wish to drag them into the mess he had created. Still his gregarious soul wished for their company, their familiar laughter – the ribald frankness of Fandral, the expansive good humour of Volstagg, the impetuous perception of Sif.

Thor resolved to find Hogun. The Vanir warrior’s laconic wisdom had provided him good counsel through many a trouble in the past. But first he had to locate Loki, who had not been present when he had awoken. _Called to the healing hall_ , said the note; even that thick vellum had fluttered in the breeze from the opened balcony, held down by the stone curves of an ammonite shell. _Come collect your thrall when you wish._

Whatever else he might have done in the wake of the evening prior, Loki had not made himself difficult to locate. A lady-in-waiting of Freyja’s court, large with child, had taken to her bed some five days later than expected. As Frigga’s most talented student, it would be only natural Loki that would find himself overtaken by the urge to aid in the difficult first birth. When he reached the chamber Thor did not go inside. It was no place for men. Even at this distance he could hear the low rustle of concerned voices, the panting cries of the mother in labour.

He could have gone elsewhere to wait for it to end. But he did not. His own body ached yet from the morning spent in the training grounds, both with weapon in hand and then wrestling others to the ground with naught but the strength and weight of his own body. About him the comings and goings of women left him as a silent stone in a rushing river.

It could only have been perhaps the slightest shift in the position of the sun before Loki emerged. As Thor stood, it felt as if they had been separated for an age entire. The beauty of him in this form shimmered like ice formed over abyssal depths, so much moving in the darkness beyond the pale surface.

“Járnsaxa,” he said, voice hoarse. Loki only nodded, expression unreadable.

“Lord Thor.”

The curious eyes of Freyja’s handmaidens burned as they walked quietly together. No words passed between them. With hands vanished into sleeves, Loki held his head high, eyes locked forward as the long sweep of the near-translucent robe whispered along the floor. Something in the motion reminded Thor of evenings passed in his youth, when he would withdraw to the palace gardens following a feast with some young woman, walking beneath the starfields while the laughter and song of the great hall faded behind them.

Passing into the hanging gardens, they were granted something approaching the illusion of solitude. Yet the greenery and blooms of the place were not just around them. Water flowed in small rivers both seen and unseen, colours twirling and twisting in the eddying currents. Thor’s eyes fixed upon one particularly bright red blossom, careening through the greenery as if it had some other place to be, one secret and strange and perfect.

Loki stopped, waited until he lingered two steps behind. “I know what you wish to speak of.”

Thor did not look back. “We need to speak of it.”

“We do not.”

Thor expelled a frustrated breath, fingers curled into his palms when he swung about. “ _You_ may not. But I do.”

Unmoved by the darkness rising in his brother’s eyes, Loki stood perfectly motionless. Though the fingers laced together before his hips were clean, Thor could still scent blood, could still taste the sting of a pain never meant to be his own.

“Don’t expect me to stand here waiting for scraps from your table,” his brother said, each word heavy and true as if etched into stone. “Járnsaxa might be your whore, but Loki is only and ever his own.”

The word burned. “That is not how it was!”

“Oh?”

It would be all too easy to storm through the spaces between them, to take his brother by the arms and attempt to shake something approaching sense into that cruelly overactive imagination. But Thor knew where such might lead. His nails dug deep enough to near-draw blood. “Then what was the point of all that?” he demanded, and Loki rolled his eyes skyward.

“What is the point of _anything_ , between us?” One hand snapped up, waved away any protest Thor might offer. A second later it turned to accusation, the pointing finger jabbing towards him. “You play at nobility, with her – saying how you cannot risk giving her more than you have to offer. And yet here you are, doing the very same to me.”

He had known from that terrible night upon the Midgardian cliff that to speak of _imagined slights_ in the hearing of his brother to be less than conducive to understanding, but Thor could not stop his scoffing laugh. “It is not the same thing and you know it.”

Loki’s smile twisted like paper caught aflame. “Isn’t it?”

“I cannot risk allowing her to believe I have more to offer her than I do. I may yet have to leave her entire.” He took half a step forward, faltered. “But you must know that I cannot ever leave you.”

It would be but the work of a scarce second to reach out, to draw Loki close once more. Loki might even do the same, should he wish it; Thor would not deny him that. Neither moved. Somewhere in the distance, laughter rose like bubbles in a sparkling wine.

“But you have.”

Loki’s words carved old wounds anew, blood welling with the bitterness of unhealed infection. “No,” Thor said, and his heart could not beat for the scar tissue clenching it closed. “No, Loki. You left me.”

He shook his head, half-smiling, eyes blank like broken mirrors. “And yet here we are, together again.”

“You said you might never escape me.” He could barely speak now. “Do you wish to do so?”

Loki’s silence said more than any words might have. Thor looked away, eyes stung with salt, feet very heavy. But he did not take one step before Loki spoke again.

“There is but one thing I would ask of you at this moment.” He turned back, found Loki’s expression impassive, far too close to vacant. “Do not tell your mortal about this.”

“What?”

“Do not tell her of this.” It was as if ice had turned him to a frozen facsimile of himself; Loki went on unabashed in mercenary demand. “We have need of her yet, and I would not have her flouncing off back to Midgard in a snit because you fucked your brother under the influence of a Vanir fertility rite.”

The uncharacteristic vulgarity of his words had Thor rearing back. Still it sent a shiver through him, the heat of it crackling through vein and artery like the rising song of summoned storm. He could not be sure the horror of it came at the thought of giving over to it, or letting it slip him by. “It excuses nothing.”

“It might excuse _everything_ , if you play your hand correctly.” And he snorted. “Which you are not going to, both because you can’t and also because you are not even going to try.”

“So you wish me to lie to my friend.”

The flatness of his tone impressed Loki not one bit, though he pursed his lips in a fashion that spoke of deep irritation. “No, I wish for you to keep your mouth closed and not say a word about the subject. It is very different.”

“It is lying by omission,” he countered, sharp and short. Loki’s scoffing laugh held an edge all of its own.

“And how much more noble will you feel, should you go charging into her chambers now to say that you and I let the night take us into your bed? Will her tears and her fury absolve you of whatever guilt you feel now?” When he tossed his head, the long braid swung like the chain of a morning-star, a swift and sharp trajectory. “I do not even understand your concern. It is not as if we shall ever do this again.”

Thor laughed. He didn’t even know why. “Will we not?”

“No.” Loki’s own expression had turned sour, eyes the dark crimson of venous blood. “No, we will not.”

It left them staring at one another. Only one word twisted on Thor’s tongue, but he did not dare speak it aloud. He didn’t even know for whose benefit it was.

_Liar._

“Thor.” And now there was something close to pity in his voice as Loki stepped forward, eyes merciless. “When all this is over, you may beat your breast and throw yourself upon the fair lady’s mercy all you like. But right now, we need her. And I will not have her abilities compromised by a broken heart.”

“And if I myself am already compromised by the same?”

A hand laid cool heat upon his cheek. Thor had to wonder even before Loki spoke if this was all some plan to bind them ever closer together. “Fool,” he whispered, the word dreadful in its fondness. “You and I, we’ve always been compromised.”

 

*****

 

Freyja had always been the type of hostess who would never abide a guest going without their desires in her halls. Though Thor had left Loki in the garden, one of her pages must have taken note of his departure; Thor had scarcely moved from one wing to the next before another step fell into rhythm with his own.

“How goes your mission?”

Thor shook his head, his smile meant more for Hogun’s company than the subject he had raised. “Well, enough.”

“And how is Járnsaxa?”

That soured anything of his good humour, though he made no motion to abandon his friend’s company. “Well, enough.”

“I thought as much.”

The first flash of true annoyance made itself known. “It is complicated.”

But then, Hogun was well used to lightning changes in mood; he would have to be, given he spent so long in the company of firebrand personalities such as those of Fandral, Sif, and Thor himself. “It need not be,” he observed instead, and Thor could only close one hand over air. Mjölnir he had left in the rooms shared with his brother; it would have been the height of bad manners to bear arms in the home of the lady Freyja.

“I believe it will never change.” He kept the beat of his footsteps even and quick. “And perhaps that makes me a fool, but then some would say I’ve always been so.”

“One in particular.”

Thor shook his head, even as Hogun matched him stride for stride. “This is not really the time to discuss it.”

“No.” Agreeable as he sounded, Hogun’s next question still hit him like a blow. “Will you be leaving Vanaheimr soon?”

That stopped him dead. Hogun appeared to have gauged the effect, given he stopped on the same beat, expression only lightly expectant. “Yes, I would assume so,” Thor replied, slow; his friend nodded in return. Anyone else would have said his expression had not changed at all, but Thor could see the satisfaction. It was all he could do not to gather the man into a bear hug, for all he could not agree with the sentiment.

“Allow us to come with you.” The dark eyes met his, even and true as a night without stars. “I will gather Volstagg, Sif, Fandral – you should not be alone. Not in this.”

“I am not alone,” he said, though the words had the taste of ice upon his tongue – mineral-cold and sharp. Hogun’s lips downturned at their corners, but it was his eyes that conveyed the true depth of his disappointment.

“All you have is a mortal.”

Thor wanted to laugh, at that. But then it had been not so long ago that he himself had been unable to appreciate the fortitude and fierce determination of the human race. “She has ever proved a true friend – both to me, and to Asgard.”

“Can you not say the same of us?”

“Hogun.” Guilt washed over him like a wave, but it had not enough force to drag him under. With one hand upon his comrade’s shoulder, he gave him a wry grin. “You are one of my dearest friends. But I do not think this is your fight.”

“If it is yours, it is ours.”

Something prickled behind his eyes, the harsh press of brine and disbelief. “Sometimes I believe I do not deserve the loyalty of such people.” This time he did laugh, without humour nor ease. “So how _does_ it come to me? Over and over?”

“Because you are worthy.” And the crooked line of Hogun’s half-smile gave way to something truer, a smile that lit up his entire face from within. “And it is our decision. And they our hearts. It is ever our choice to entrust them to you.”

Even as he shook his head one last time, he embraced the other tight. “Thank you, my friend.”

“Call upon us, and we will come.”

“I know.”

Hogun left him to his own devices then, but it was all too easy to summon another of Freyja’s many pages. Again, his hostess’s precognition seemed at play; the young woman was able to immediately inform him that Dr. Foster had retired to one of the many reading rooms upon the water. This one lay in the western reaches of Sessrumnir. His martially-ordered mind memorised the offered directions with scarce effort, and when he arrived he observed her for a long moment from across the room. The floor sighed softly with the gentle swell of the water below, the lengthening light of afternoon turning dark hair to gold. When she glanced up, sudden, her smile burned.

He sat across from her without a word, but his hands were light over hers. Only then did her smile begin to fade, fingers warm where they shifted over his skin. “Are you all right?”

“I will be.” _But who knows when_. “How are you?”

Withdrawing her hands, Jane gave a self-conscious little laugh. Thor recognised it well; it was one she often used when uncertain about the next direction she ought to take her work in. “Oh, just messing about. Making notes. Building theories. The usual.” Balancing her chin upon one hand she frowned. “So what do we do next?”

“I imagine Loki is going to want you to try and isolate something of the Vanadís.”

“And do you really think we should?”

The sharpness of that left him tired. “He is not wrong,” he said, but she bit her lip hard, shook her head.

“You don’t even know who this Thanos is.” Then she paused, as if debating her next words; he could see why when she gave them voice. “You don’t even know that he _exists_! Can we risk putting that kind of power in Loki’s hands when we have no idea what he really wants it for?”

“The Chitauri were given to him. He did not take the army. These are facts I know.” And they were as bitter now as they had ever been; even then they had changed nothing. “And he was not well, when he arrived on Midgard.”

“From what he said, he’d been close enough to death,” she agreed, but with a tone that said this deserved a proviso; Thor only shook his head.

“It would be enough to drive anyone mad.”

“Thor, if he’s mad, do you really think we can trust a word he says?”

“And if it is true? Should I not be acting to protect Asgard from so great a threat? All the Nine Realms, and those beyond Yggdrasil too?”

“Yes.” And for a brilliant moment he looked at her, and could only love her; the simple strength of but a single word rendered her as something far greater than her mortal form could ever hope to contain. But then she pursed her lips, dark hair flying as she shook her head. “We should be trying to make sure the threat exists before we give Loki any more ammunition.” When she spoke again, reluctance drew the words out long and uncertain. “Could you talk to your father, maybe?”

“I do not think he saw anything of Thanos. It was not he who found Loki, nor did Heimdall see him either.”

She formed the words with the reverence of a prayer, the uncertain fear of a potential geas. “It was Frigga.”

“It was Frigga,” he repeated, low, and Jane let out a slow breath. Then she turned her face to the sea. It was barely beyond the meridian, and a three-masted ship skimmed light over the waves like a dolphin slipping between the worlds of water and air. A moment later it slipped free, water cascading over the runed wood of its hull, sails billowing wide and white as it took to the blue of the skies above.

“We cannot risk taking Loki into Asgard, even garbed as Járnsaxa. I am certain Freyja suspects already, and Father will see through him in a heartbeat.” Thor sighed, the sound heavy and harsh. “What he will do then, I do not know. But the truth remains thus: somebody gave Loki the power he wielded on Midgard, and Loki failed to deliver whatever was promised.”

“So you won’t put him in danger.” The flatness of those words twinged something in him, a taut string of sudden anger, but he cut it before it could catch upon anything that might bleed.

“I led him to his death once in defence of the realms, Jane. Is it so wrong that I cannot allow him to risk it alone now, whatever his reasons?” he asked instead, and her own sigh held the soft downward trajectory of autumn leaves: inevitable, melancholy, resigned.

“No. And that’s the worst thing about it.”

She picked up one of her pens: blue ink, or so he deduced when she began to draw aimless circles upon the paper. The faint rock of the wood beneath their feet held the motion of a child’s cradle, a soft back and forth that did not hold the power now to lull him to sleep. He was not a child anymore. None of them were.

“Would Freyja know anything about Thanos?”

His fingers tightened upon the tabletop, though there was little to hold on to. “We could ask her to see what lurks without, and within.”

“Maybe we should do that. Say it’s something to do with…just curiosity, I guess. A name Loki mentioned. Just wanting to know if there’s anything to worry about, now that he is gone.”

“It would certainly be worth a try,” he said, but already she was frowning again.

“Where _is_ Loki?”

For a moment he could all but taste the salt-sweet scent of the garden; he shook his head before he could choke on it. “One of Freyja’s handmaidens had a difficult birth. I believe he is with the ladies still.”

Something about the tilt of her head spoke of disbelief, but she did not speak it aloud. “So you really weren’t kidding about the midwifery thing.”

“No. I was not.”

He hadn’t meant to be quite so short with her. But then perhaps it did not matter, because whatever troubled her now, simmering just beneath the surface, seemed borne of another source entirely. “Can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

The slim fingers shifted over the pages before her; the scattered equations and notes written in her rounded hand were in a language not even the Alltongue could bid him speak himself. “It’s…kind of about this whole fertility festival thing.”

Thor stiffened in his chair. His eyes were wide open and fixed upon her, and yet all he could see was Loki’s sly grin. The strength of his thighs had been such a strange heat, pressed about his cock; not even the raised ridges of his familial lines has been cold where they had dragged over sensitised skin.

“Thor.” Her lower lip trembled, but the rest of her was strong, simple as her question. “Tell me straight – do you want me?”

“What?”

His own answering question had been too sudden, too startled; she flushed crimson from head to foot, and for a moment he could only remember how Loki’s eyes had burned beneath the sweep of dark eyelashes. “I just…I know this isn’t a great time for you. And it’s been hard, in lots of ways. I just…am I even attractive, to you?”

“Of course!”

“Then why…why haven’t we…why haven’t you…”

Even as Jane trailed off his own mind flared, bright and blinding: the arch of a throat, the closing of fingers, the low rumble of pleasure in harmony with the quick-beat melody of a heart known too well. It was a long moment before he could swallow it down, push it away, find breath enough even to live, let alone speak.

“Jane.” His hands moved hesitant upon the table, unable to bridge the gap between them, uncertain of whether he should be allowed such a touch now. “I do not wish to make you promises that circumstances may not allow me to keep.”

Though she smiled, it was the reflexive gesture of a mask fitted over emotions she wished to keep to herself. “Only circumstances?”

When he thought back to the first woman he had known – although she’d been scarcely more than a girl, as he’d been but a boy by any warrior’s standards – he could not quite remember her name. Even her face, pretty as it had been, was little more than a blur of soft features and a cloud of blonde hair. Thor lowered his head. “I am sorry,” he said, soft, and then forced himself to look upward. “But my friendship is all I have to offer now.”

Her hurt held a resignation that cut deeper than any anger. “Will you ever be able to give me more than that?”

“Jane, I do not know.”

Where Loki had often preferred the elegance of a lie, Thor had always taken the lesson that it could never triumph over truth. In that moment, he knew that truth for a certain lie, even before her fingers closed over a pen, let it go. It rolled from the table, and she did not even appear to notice. “You know, back when I first went to Asgard, we were talking by the fountain. About the convergence.”

“We were.”

“You spoke of how the worlds are separate, but sometimes, once in five thousand years…they align.” Now she stared at her equations, but he did not think she saw a thing. “And then…they pass by.”

“Jane.”

But he could say no more. Not when she looked up, smile tremulous and yet somehow tender. “All I could think about then was how lucky we were, to meet. I never thought about the bit where everything moved out of sequence again.” When she swallowed, convulsive and sudden, he tasted those tears himself. “Did you?”

“I did not want to.”

“But I guess everyone kept reminding you of it.”

“I care not for the opinion of others.” And this time he did reach for her, hands cold and desperate. “I care for _you_.”

She yanked hers back, stood up so violently the chair toppled to the point of almost collapse. But it still stood, and so did she; still she had wrapped her arms tight about herself. In that lonely embrace she took three quick steps backward, twisted on a heel so that she faced the sea beyond the filigree of rails like coral and seashell. “But it’s not just me,” she said, soft. “Your father said I don’t understand what it means to be a prince. And he’s right.”

“But you understand _me_ ,” he said, urgent and hurting. Her immediate reply held all the force of a broken electrical circuit.

“Do I?”

Pain flared, strange and alien. Thor could not name himself stranger to rejection, but as prince and lord of thunder it had never been a familiar companion. Yet even that did not adequately explain the force of it. Looking down into the upturned face, heart-shaped and solemn, the dark eyes so large and open, he realised for the first time exactly what he had lost.

One small hand reached forward upon a sigh. “That was unfair,” she whispered, and her own eyes were too bright. The trail of her fingers over one stubbled cheek passed for tears. “But we’re…friends, right?”

He swallowed hard, felt the burn all the way down. “We are.”

“Then maybe that’s what we should concentrate on.” Swaying forward upon the tip-toe, her scent of warm spring and sharp electric sting enveloped him. “And if there’s more, there’s more,” she added, though already her fingers drifted away like the remnants of a dream upon the dawn. “But you know, we _are_ from different worlds. And maybe that’s for a reason.”

He ached to reach out, to catch her, to hold her close. “There is no-one else in all the realms like you, Jane Foster.”

When she took a step back, her own hands had stolen behind her back. “We can only be who we are,” she whispered, and turned away.

But Thor walked at her side. He shortened his stride; she lengthened hers. It still wasn’t quite enough to bring them into synchronous step, but it was enough. But even as he moved with her his thoughts still stole sideways – to a world of dull blue and cold white, and how a child had been taken from one to the other.

The Norns had their reasons, of course, but then not even the most hopeful of skalds could ever claim they would ever be kind.

 

*****

 

“Are you reading?”

When he glanced up the disdain he wore should have said everything needed. And yet Loki then glanced down again, turning another page in the book he had propped up against his thighs. “I am trying to work out where the other stones might be,” he said, short. Thor took a step further into their shared chambers. His palms felt damp where he rubbed them on his trousers. He didn’t think it was just the humidity.

“Freyja told me of a tapestry. It is woven with the story of the dreamer and her younger lover.”

Loki’s brow creased, his fingers still. The book kept his gaze. “Oh?”

“Would you come see it with me?”

Though he himself could not hear any sort of plea in the request, the slant to Loki’s gaze shivered underneath his skin. But then his brother always had been more perceptive than most. “Have you not seen it yourself?” he asked, very careful. Thor passed a hand over his hair, the small braids rough against his palm.

“No. Not yet.”

Wordless, Loki closed the book, set it with a careful reverence upon the windowseat before rising. Again they walked together; the air had taken on the faintest chill of approaching evening. Dinner would be served in a few scant hours. Yet his stomach took no interest in it, appetite long since collapsed in upon itself. The eyes of those they passed lingered upon them, bold and curious, even before Loki bridged the gap between them and linked their fingers together.

Still looking directly ahead, Thor spoke in a scarce whisper. “What are you doing?”

No answer. But Loki did not take it back. Despite the actions of the night before, the intimacy of this contact held the air of something different instead. It was not that of lovers. Rather, it was like the touch of children. And how had often they had chased each other through the corridors of Asgard’s great royal palace: first as children at play, then as brothers at war. But then sometimes they had just walked together, in the fashion they had seen occasionally of their mother and father: hand-clasped, heads bent together, every step to the matched beat of the hearts they shared.

His brother understood only when they stopped before it. Loki’s hand spasmed in his own, and when he turned the agony on his face was as furious as it was heartbreaking.

“You _knew_.”

“I did.”

And both his hands raised to his head, clutching it between his palms as if it hurt. Then he went down, crouched upon the floor, hunched in upon himself as if he were a shelled creature trying to retreat deep within its armoured self. “ _Oh_.”

The wail was short, too sharp; in that one sound Thor understood for the first time how very deep his brother’s sorrow ran. Not even the memory of the ruined cell compared to this, his proud brother reduced to a trembling shapeless form at his feet by the simple sight of one tapestry.

He needed to turn. He needed to go to his own knees, to wrap his arms around his shivering brother and hold him close. Then they might cry together for what they both had lost. Instead he raised his eyes to the woven perfection before them, a voice of not so long ago strong in his mind.

_Trust my rage_.

Their mother’s tapestry hung before them, a great tree spreading branches like a shielding canopy over those cupped within its reach. Leaves curled about golden star and silver moon, but no realms did it balance upon its boughs. This tree, not one he had ever known, stood between the two: the woman upon the left, the man to its right. And where he turned to the spaces beyond the edges of the tapestry, she looked only to him. Crowned as he was with gold, she reached for him, trailing silver in her wake. And yet never did he look back, and when Loki glanced up, face drawn and pale but tearless, Thor could only speak low.

“Perhaps it is Yggdrasil that has something to do with time,” he said, and could not hold back the uncertainty of it. “They do say the Norns are the ones who measure our fate.”

Loki’s scorn was ragged, hands pressed firm against the floor. “They are three, and the story of the spurned goddess speaks only of one.”

“It is a legend,” Thor said, slow, and Loki gave a short bark of laughter.

“And thus it speaks only couched in mystery and fogged in false memory?”

“The Norns do have control over the past, the present, and the future.” Thor held out a hand as Loki pushed unsteady to his feet; his brother ignored it, lips pressed so close together as to be bloodless. “Perhaps they know of the time stone.”

“So are you suggesting we go for a slide down Yggdrasil to find them? Just pop over to Urðr’s well and ask her if we might take a drink? Or perhaps a dip?”

Thor ignored the cruel thrust of his brother’s sneering tone. It was a skill long since honed and perfected. “Perhaps it is the _waters_ that are the time stone,” he said instead, uncertain over the half-crystallised thought. “They are said to stop the roots of the Tree from rotting, after all.”

“This is true.” Loki’s own voice had shed all mockery like a snake shucking its skin, leaving something blank and half-born in its wake. “The snow-white clay, or so they say.”

But he said no more than that. Thor tilted his gaze sideways, felt his heart twist in upon itself. His brother had turned his gaze downward, eyes very blank where they fixed upon his extended hands. The blue skin was looped always with the reminder of his blood heritage. Yet Thor remembered so well how pale he had always been: like snow, some had said. White and pure, the way his trickster soul ought never to be.

“You are still Loki.”

“Who else would I be?” His hand slapped down with sudden violence, voice sharpened to a killing blade. “Damn those völva, anyway!”

He did not speak of Freyja or her ilk. Thor knew as much, but kept it wisely to himself as Loki began to pace, the fluttering silk of his over-robe so like the clouds their mother would weave upon her loom to entertain them when they had been but wide-eyed babes barely out of their cradles.

“Those crones are present at every birth. They carve their lines and give us our fates, and what did I do to deserve what I got?” He whirled on Thor then, a fierce creature of crimson and ice-blue, dark hair giving over to wild curl about his narrow features. “Yes, you can punish me for what I have done since! But did I have any choice, given they took it from me to begin with?”

Thor did not move, even as he ached to lay hands upon him, draw him so close he might not shatter all to pieces. “There is always a choice, Loki.”

“But few of us are given the luxury of making them for ourselves.”

Thor let it lie as disquiet between them. He had long since accepted that this would be something upon which they would never agree. It had ever been a space separating them, yet what had been but a crack when they were children had now grown to a yawning chasm.

Loki had turned, again; Thor took a quiet breath, tried again. “ _Can_ we go to the Well?” he asked, quiet. Loki shook his head, even as the affirmative rolled from his tongue like the warning rumble of an approaching storm.

“There are ways.”

The uneasy tempest of their changing moods made everything of this conversation so difficult, but then Thor could not see it otherwise. With one hand clenched tight about a handle that was not there, he asked, “Will you show me?”

“Do I have a choice?”

He could not help the frustration that drove his words. “I just said you did!”

Loki only stared at him, a little half smile upon his lips. Thor’s hands wished for nothing more than to strike it from his sneering face, even as he knew better – that it was agony and not anger that drove the maliciousness of his reply.

“If only all words could carry such weight as yours.”

Thor was losing the argument, as always. He turned away. “So what about the reality stone, then?”

“Reality. Wishes. What does it matter?”

Frustration filled him again, molten-hot and furious. “You are the one who wishes to defeat Thanos!”

“And if you could wish for anything, what would it be?” he asked, voice pitching up just a fraction too high in its disdain, too close to that of a pale-skinned dark-haired child who had so easily called his insults before scampering away to the sanctity of his shadows. “Oh, you already have all your fool heart could desire: a throne for the taking and some mortal woman to moon over you like a believer before her god,” Loki snarled, and even as his teeth ground hard together Thor laughed.

“I am not so certain of that.”

“Don’t play these games with me.”

But he set his jaw, displayed his hand with the reckless confidence of a gambler with very little left to win anymore. “Had someone asked me outright but days ago, I would have said: _my brother_.”

Loki grinned, teeth like knives. “And now?”

“I have Loki,” he said, flat. “But I am still waiting for my brother.”

And when he reached forward, hand curved to take his brother about his neck as he had hundreds of thousands of times in the past, Loki lurched back. “Do not touch me.”

“I know he is within you.”

“Liar.”

“I’ve seen him. Because I’m not waiting for him to come back.” Thor did not smile. He did not weep. He only sighed, and shook his head. “I’m waiting for him to feel safe enough to stay.”

Something in him wished he had not said those words aloud even as the greater parts of him felt fierce gladness that he had. Yet Loki’s crimson eyes, distant even as they bore deep into his own, held deep fractures that Thor did not think even time might ever heal.

“Please leave me alone.”

But he could not. Instead he stayed ever at his side as they walked back to the chamber Freyja had given over to them both. The books ordered along one wall of course called Loki’s attention. Thor, unable to settle to such pastimes even under the best of circumstances, had little other to do than staring out into the gardens, and then the water beyond. His very skin seemed to itch with the desire to do _something_. Yet he could not bear the thought of stepping away from his brother. He had paced out the length of the veranda perhaps seven times when a blessed knock broke the growing tension between them; he called entrance, and but a moment later a familiar figure stepped into view.

“Thor.”

He grasped the outstretched wrist, felt the return of it tight about his own even as his smile grew. “Hogun.”

“I thought you might like to spar before the evening meal.”

The relief flooded through him so sudden and strong for a moment he forgot to breathe. While he’d spent the morning with various members of Freyja’s household guard and then some of those who had accompanied Freyr, already the good of that had drained from every muscle. The thought of doing something with his body, of giving his mind over to motion and martial law, was like a drowning mind sighting shore. He glanced backward, even as Loki but turned another page. Such tension between them had often led to fist fights and wrestling as children. He could not be certain where it could go, now.

_Liar_.

“Come on, then,” he said, perhaps somewhat too rough. Hogun’s brow furrowed but he said no more, even as Thor stepped over, flicked the cover with thumb and forefinger. Loki scarcely reacted, though only in movement; Thor knew enough to see that in his mind coiled a far greater reaction, if only he was pressed a little harder. He set his mouth in a flat line and tried to ignore the excitement that flared low in his own gut.

“Loki. I will not leave you here alone.”

The scowl was entirely in his tone, rather than upon his face. “I would rather read.”

“Come with me.”

Thor did not take his wrist in hand, much as he wished to. With Hogun present he did not dare lay hands upon his brother. But his words demanded obedience. Or perhaps Loki himself wished no audience for this newest permutation of games they had played since babyhood. With a true glare he swung his feet down from the windowseat. When he came, the book did too, tucked beneath the stiffened curve of one arm.

Freyja’s training grounds were not part of the floating hall itself, but rather spread themselves upon the shore it had been anchored to. The Vanir had never been as martially-minded as the Asgardians – which to some was the reason why they had fallen in that ancient war – but they knew the limits of their bodies, their weapons, and their seiðr. And with Freyr so often staying with her, and he a martial expert, it could only be natural that Freyja would dedicate this part of her home to such.

Freyja herself possessed deep skill. It should have been no particular surprise to see her outside on such a brilliant afternoon, but there she stood at the centre of one arena with hair bound back and lithe form revealed by the tunic and leggings she wore. It was more startling to see that she stood at Jane’s side, quick hands adjusting hip and foot to give her stance proper balance. The closer they came, the more it became apparent that both Freyr and Freyja had decided to give her a lesson in their own particular brand of martial art.

“Thor!” Freyr’s hail carried across the shortening distance with a musical lilt. “Come, join your lovely scientist!”

He could but hope the broad line of his smile hid any lingering jealousy at the thought she had never asked to join in any of the lessons he had offered Darcy and Ian. “They are not wearing you out, I trust.”

“No way!” One forearm pulled over her forehead, her mouth open as she struggled to catch breath enough to laugh. “It’s actually fun.”

Again that flicker of disappointment caught him hard, though not as deep as the sudden yearning that rose up from a different place entire. The gleam of perspiration upon her clear skin, dark hair pulled back in a messy tail, body lean and strong in the borrowed trousers and vest…

“I would offer you a round, but you’d win in two seconds flat,” Jane said as she dug a friendly elbow into his side; even though he scarcely felt the jab he gave a mock groan, was poised upon the verge on an answer when a low voice rippled between them.

“Well, some of us do actually _prefer_ to be on our backs when around the Odinson.”

The sharp look he sent his brother ought to have flayed him where he stood. Yet Loki, serene and lovely in the form of Járnsaxa, only gave him a smile in return. Jane’s eyes on them both held a question only half-formed, but Thor knew her mind to be quick with any feat of deduction. Only Freyja’s delicate cough broke the silence of their uneasy triad.

“Perhaps I could offer myself up as sparring partner, Thor?”

The mere thought sent a frisson through his skin; small and swift, even without seiðr singing from her fingertips Freyja could bring down many an opponent the uninitiated would have marked as well out of her class. His assent barely reached his lips before a low laugh moved between them.

“Oh, sister, I do have to be most rude, and press my own suit ahead of yours. We have…a matter to settle, as it were.”

Jane frowned, again pushing sweat-damp hair from her eyes. “What?”

The smile he wore could have charmed a rabbit into a nest of vipers. “Have no fear, Lady Jane, I have little interest in doing any harm to the prince. It is just that there is something he has that I would…borrow, for a moment.” But his eyes held not the humour to match his tone when he looked back. “I would challenge you, Thor Odinson – and when I win, I would take from you a simple boon.”

“What is it that you want?” he asked, flat, though the answer had no need to be spoken aloud.

“Time with your thrall.”

“No.”

Loki’s laughter rose and fell like the waves of the great harbour, but Thor and Freyr did not break their opposed ranks. “Oh, but you say that you are the strongest of us all,” the Vanir said, dark eyes an open challenge. “You cannot be defeated. What then could you possibly be afraid of?”

“Anyone can be defeated.” The baldness of the statement had Loki’s smile congealing at its edges, though only one familiar with his masks might have seen it. Thor’s own expression remained grim and unforgiving. “One simply has to know where their weak point is.”

Freyr shrugged one shoulder, fingers curled into a light fist. “I almost feel that I have found yours.”

The grinding of his teeth reminded Thor that his temper would ever hold the power to best his better instincts. Yet beneath the rising fury followed close the faint worry that Freyr might have seen through Loki’s disguise – though Thor would have believed it of Freyja before her brother. That did not mean she had not been the first to do so, and that in turn she had told him so. Never had a brother and sister had so few secrets from one another.

“You have nothing to barter in return,” he said instead, voice almost preternatural in its calm. Still, in the distance, he could sense the rise of the northern winds. “There is nothing of yours that I would want.”

“Is that so?”

Rhetorical question though it might have been, Loki’s voice cut between them. “If you do not fight, I will go with him.” Thor turned on him with vicious surprise, and he basked in it like a feline in sunlight. “Call it…curiosity.”

“I forbid it!”

“And what will you do to stop me? Send me back to Jötunheimr?” The curve of his smile was a blade sharpened on all edges, cutting wielder as much as opponent. “He will find me again there. He’s very…curious, about my kind.”

Loki so easily matched the tempestuous force of his brother’s glare; long fingers sat so light upon the borrowed book. Thor’s mouth tasted of salt, and he could see that the swelling waves in the harbour now had tips of furious white.

When Thor turned to Freyr, his tone echoed with the oncoming storm. “And if I win, you will never touch him?”

Again he shrugged, insouciant as a child at play. “If those are the stakes you wish to name, then but of course.”

No more needed to be said. With his jaw set hard Thor stripped to his trousers, kicked his boots aside. The sparring in the morning had loosened his muscles considerably, even with the time that had passed since; still he began the usual forms that would increase bloodflow, warming both skin and what lay beneath.

Freyr’s voice floated over to him, barely touched by the chill breeze skimming in across the water. “What weapons would you prefer, Asgardian?” It was only the lightest mockery when he asked, “Shall I meet the mighty Mjölnir in battle at last?”

Thor tilted about, long muscle of back and neck moving with all the ease of an oiled machine. “This is no battle.”

“Ah, only but a playground brawl?” Again, Freyr all but laughed in the face of what he had invited upon himself. “Then perhaps it is fair enough that you do not involve the fair lady in such trivialities.”

“Should you ever chance to meet Mjölnir she would teach you much about the ways of both fairness and of ladies.”

Freyr held his ground with easy nonchalance as Thor drew nearer, though he then inclined towards one of the many weapons racks that ringed their chosen arena. “As would the Lady Sif, should she be here, of that I have no doubt.” Both hands rose, loosened his dark hair; a moment later he began to rebind it into a tighter queue that would reach down between his shoulderblades. “But there is only one of your nearest I wish to win from you today. So, let us choose another – or perhaps we shall each wield no weapon at all?”

Thor’s hand closed tight about a leather-worked grip. The weight of it in his hand could not be more different to Mjölnir’s familiar heft, but still it felt absolute in its suitability. “Staffs.”

And for the first time Freyr showed genuine surprise. “As you would.”

They took a moment to bind their hands, to dip them in the barrel of fine chalk taken from many a crushed shell. Without another look to his opponent Thor took to the ring, sand warm beneath the bare soles of his feet. The sun caressed his shoulders like a knowing lover, the wind raising loose hair to press gentle whispers against the nape of his neck.

But even as he felt the familiar call of battle summoning him away, one glance sideways told him Jane watched, arms folded. She looked unhappy. Freyja smiled at her side, her hair now loose about her shoulders; her parasol was scattered with jewels whose light fluttered in the sun like butterfly wings. Their hostess leaned over, whispered something in Jane’s ear; it only tensed her shoulders more. On her other side Loki stood as serene as a watchful Norn. But then, no: this was _Járnsaxa_ , with the long braid over one shoulder, the shimmering lines of his house tracing over revealed skin, and the light silk of a chosen gown translucent over the leather of the tunic worn beneath.

Thor caught those scarlet eyes, found instead that they held his tighter still. One eyebrow arched high, one corner of his lips curving to match, and Thor turned. _Never look away from your opponent._ Their father’s words beat a military tattoo in his mind as he began a light shift upon his feet. _The prize is what you concern yourself with – you must know what you stand to win when the battle ends. Enjoy it if you can, endure it if you must: but when you fight, do not leave the battlefield in mind nor body until the outcome is clear. Fight with reason, and for reason, even if your thoughts become but storm and fire until all is done._

No more words would pass between them now. Set across and apart from one another, the battlelines had been drawn into the sand. A nod, and then: both flowed into position. Freyr’s staff he held over one hip, low, the other hand poised as if to draw a sword. In turn Thor moved his low across both hips, a two handed grip as he stood side-on to his opponent.

The smile upon the Vanir’s face shone as bright as any clear ocean beneath blue sky. “Shall we?”

Thor’s eyes were as lightning-riddled iron. “Call it.”

No name passed his lips; still a light rippling laugh answered in turn. “As you would.” And Loki stepped forward, raised one arm. Even with eyes fixed only upon one another their bodies trembled upon that motionless hand.

It fell with all the ease of a guillotine blade.

“ _Begin_.”

Neither darted forward; from Freyr’s knowing grin, he felt clear surprise that the Odinson had not charged headfirst into full engagement. Instead the Vanir easily following Thor’s own circling motion, fluid and watchful. He did not need bide his time long; Thor pressed a brief forward assault, the motion arrested in a hard clash of sticks.

But Thor sought no advantage yet. Instead he moved backward, kept his bulk ever in motion. Such tactics were not generally his own chosen method; it was something closer to the ever-moving methods taught by Frigga to Loki, where she would so often use both self-generated torque and momentum to add power to her attacks. Freyr had not Thor’s muscle mass either, and was very light upon his feet. And very good with his staff.

This time it was Freyr who took the offensive. With another one-two-three of clash and crack they met, and then Thor drew away. Almost immediately Freyr darted back in, ducking a downward blow from the side; he came up again to strike at Thor’s shoulder, even as the larger man easily parried him back.

And he laughed, not the scarcest bit out of breath. “Always good to see that you are not faithful to only your hammer, Odinson!”

His own grin held the iron-sweet taste of imagined blood. “I only understood the weapon that suited my hand best by testing the many who came before her.”

“And yet you have not forgotten the others so distant in your past.”

Thor feinted a step forward, watched Freyr’s back-and-forth motion change rhythm to match, then return to his own tempo. “They are all part of the warrior who is,” he said, careless, hands steady upon the worn leather. “I carry their memories with me still.”

This time he pressed his attack. The staffs hit hard and low, but a second later Freyr looped his under, bringing a corkscrew motion that forced Thor upward. The Asgardian ducked back, but not fast enough. A striking blow took him across the face, leaving in its sharp taste of iron.

Laughter swirled about his head, the motion driving him down. For a brief moment he looked up only to the sky. Then he rolled away before Freyr could bring down his staff, rocking to his feet; Freyr had already removed himself from Thor’s considerable reach, a whirling dervish upon the sand.

A growl rumbled through his chest, hand tightening upon the staff. It was nothing to the memory of the strength of Mjölnir he was so used to. Yet for all his love of his weapon, Thor had been born one himself. He struck hard, and down; the resultant slide along the shaft of his staff forced Freyr back just enough. Thor followed the forward motion with the fierce fury of an aimed hurricane. Dark eyes widened. Quick though Freyr might be, Thor’s sheer power when thrust upon him made it hard to manoeuvre, to get out from under him. Speed might be a way to wear such a warrior down, if Thor would allow it.

But he did not. The sheer force of his strikes shuddered through the long bones, the lean muscle, even when backed only by the lightweight staff. It weakened Freyr’s grasp just enough. But the critical mistake came when he allowed again the same slide. Freyr had not the strength to turn it back and Thor connected hard and sharp against his hand; jarred fingers loosened by reflex.

Yanking the staff to the other side in one sharp movement, Thor then rammed it back in the opposing direction. The force knocked Freyr’s own weapon free before he had the chance to tighten his grip. Then victory required little more than a drawn-up knee, a shove thrust hard into the other’s solar plexus. His own staff he drew back to grip between between both hands. It was but the work of a mere second to drop to his knees, bracing them either side of Freyr’s hips as he pressed the staff down low over the heave of his throat.

“Do you yield?”

He could not quite laugh, not with the movement of air so restricted by both wood and the furious will of his victorious opponent. “I suppose I have no choice.” Still Freyr grinned around the rasp of his voice. “And now, neither does she. But then, did she ever?”

The staff clenched in Thor’s hands thrust again, leaping forward of its own accord; across the way, Freyja’s voice rose in a wordless cry of warning. But then, it was not her who calmed his berserker heart. When Thor rose it was with his own mind directing every motion. Only he could be to blame when he widened his grip upon the staff, pushing downward until the thing snapped in twain.

He knew it to be no way to treat a weapon, even one used only in practice. When he glared about the silent watchers he saw little; his eyes were stung with sweat, hair hanging heavy before them. The ache of unstruck lightning in his veins made him restless, and his voice rumbled across the arena as if it were of the mind to split the ground from beneath his own feet.

“Járnsaxa is no longer my thrall.” The words rang out like storm, thunderous and unforgiving. “I say this now: Járnsaxa of Jötunheimr is her own person. She travels with me by choice – because that choice is hers alone.” Only now did his throw the two halves down, their ragged edges digging deep into the sand so that only their rounded ends remained above. “So then, my lady – do what you want you wish. It seems you always will.”

Thor did not even look to Loki. Instead he stormed from the field, the beat of his feet first the patter of burgeoning rain; when he broke into first a jog, and then a run it became the fierce rattle of a rainstorm at full pelt. The shore beckoned him closer still, the edge coming on and retreating with mischievous invitation.

Without question he plunged deep into the waters. Vanaheimr’s oceans always held a chill, for all the humidity of the air. Thor did not care. Beneath the waves all sound was drowned out, muffled, something like half-forgotten. But then he needed to breathe. He needed to taste the air, sharp and bitter with plasma and ozone. Still it was some time before he emerged from the sea. Upon damp sand he shook his hair like a dog, pushing his hands back through it so he might see again. Yet when the salt washed away, he could not hide his surprise.

“Here.”

Her small hand held it out like an offering: a drying sheet, white and thick. But there was no penitence, no prostration. Her world might once have named him a god, but this was a woman of science. Shame had never felt heavier upon even his broad shoulders.

“I am sorry.”

“For what?” Then Jane shook her head. “No. Don’t. I just…thank you. For what you did.” And now she spared him a wry grin. “It was the right thing to do, you know.”

“Oh, it figures that he would give me my false freedom for _you_ , and never for myself.”

The sea had taken from him much of his fury, drinking it down with endless appetite. Still it rushed back when he turned, found Loki with raised eyebrow just two steps behind Jane. “What are you doing here?” he rasped, hands clenched tight upon the drying sheet. “Go, test your limits and give yourself away if you wish it. It is no concern of mine.”

Loki snorted. The shirt he thrust Thor’s way cut through the air swift for all its lack of weight; Thor snatched it from the air with fierce temper. “It is and you know it,” Loki returned coolly, and Thor scowled, half-turned as he began to pull said shirt over his head.

“We cannot argue this here.”

“Can’t we?”

He swung about, scowl deepening. The beach was hardly far from Sessrumnir, and he knew that they would have long since drawn an audience. “You come with me,” he said, and Loki snatched back his arm from the rough grip.

“No.” His eyes gleamed like scarlet ash. “You are not the master of me.”

“ _Come with me now Norns take you_.”

His fingers lay bruises upon that blue skin, a darkening indigo beneath the blue. Jane’s words were but a blur to him, for now as meaningless as the burning curiosity of distant eyes upon them. Thor clenched tighter still, and Loki could not shake himself loose.

“You declare me free and then drag me away?”

The fingers fell open, the words as a key to a manacle. “What do you want from me?” he whispered, and Loki just smiled.

“Why, everything.”

The shiver through him should have been one of horror. And yet he had never felt such excitement as when he leaned forward, smile as dark as Loki’s eyes.

“Then come.”

Thor did not drag Loki through the corridors – though he would have, had his brother not matched him step for step with an infuriating ease. The startled looks of fellow guests and staff were but as shadows to him. Thor stormed into their shared chambers, slammed all doors closed in their wake. For all the tempered heat of their uneasy truce, the walk had only given him time enough to rouse again the earlier fury.

“By the Norn’s half-dozen _tits_ , Loki, what are you doing?” he roared. His brother only blinked, then shrugged.

“Provoking you.”

“ _Why?_ ”

That clever tongue rolled around his mouth, as if just keeping back a bray of bright laughter. “How else can I believe a word from a person who is all action and but a fool with his tongue?”

His fingers ached for the press of flesh beneath them, the feel of blood pooling beneath their callused, hardened tips. And yet Loki’s words were cool against the heat of reddened vision, his laughter a short sharp bark. “You _wanted_ me to fight over you.”

The unfettered delight of Loki’s amusement should have been a beautiful thing. “And it took you this long to realise it?”

“Maybe I just wanted to beat something into the ground that wasn’t you, for once.”

Loki’s laughter choked upon itself. Then his eyes flashed a brilliant scarlet, hands like claws where they seized his brother by damp collar, hauling him close with a strength that spoke too true of his Jötunn heritage.

“You _never_ fought for my honour before,” he hissed, shaking him like a great feline having caught its prey. “You were always quite happy to let them say what they would about the seiðmaðr coward who was your _brother_.”

Thor’s hands remained only at his sides, palms open and wide. “And would you have allowed me to fight in your name?” he asked, reasonable even though he knew this might hardly make the scarcest difference to his brother. “This is the only way I ever could have done it without you trying to take my head off.”

Loki snorted, face so close his cold breath felt to leave tiny bites of frost and ice upon Thor’s damp skin. “Perhaps I still will.”

Thor could not contain his darkening grin. “Perhaps you will _try_.”

And now Loki’s hands released his collar, but they did not let him go. Instead they skimmed down his sides, slipping so easy beneath the loose waistband of the borrowed trousers. “Oh, _will_ I?” he whispered, and his hands closed tight about the muscle of his brother’s ass.

With a growl of his own Thor did not wait to be encouraged forward. He thrust his hips forward, felt the heat of a matched arousal. Leaning forward, breath coming quick, he pressed their foreheads together, closed his eyes even as he clutched at his brother’s arms.

“I thought we were not going to do this again,” he whispered, and Loki chuckled.

“And I thought you just called me a liar.”

His fingers tightened on the cool skin of Loki’s upper arms, revealed by the flutter of the slashed sleeves. His brother had never been one to wear clothes that revealed so much of the body beneath. And yet somehow, even in this borrowed skin, Thor felt he had never been able to see less of him.

“Loki.”

The whisper trembled like coronal discharge between them, alive with an energy entirely its own. “Thor?”

He drew back away first. Even as Loki’s hands slipped free of his trousers, his own remained limp at his sides. “We still must find the other infinity stones.”

Whatever his brother’s thoughts on their abrupt parting might have been, they were not easily seen behind the light mockery of his chosen expression. “Yes, and I rather think we have worn out our welcome here,” he observed, and Thor bit down hard on the urge to cross the two steps between them, to push his brother up against the wall, to lick the salt of his sweat from where throat dipped into collarbone.

“Where do you propose we go?” he asked, and Loki’s eyes lit up with plasma fire.

“Midgard.”

Every muscle in his body tensed to attention. “Loki, _no_.”

“Asgard will not have us, and I will not have Asgard. Your mortal has a home we might use as a base of operations, no?”

The rise and fall of the barges populating the harbour made it seem a tapestry of fireflies in the dying of the day, though the count of colours could never match the kaleidoscope of the rainbow bridge. “You were never permitted to return,” he said, and the ache of that still turned a sharp knife in his side. And of course, his damnable brother only chuckled.

“But it was _Loki_ who challenged that little rag-tag team of heroes and hired help – and I am not Loki.” This time when he smiled, he did not need to show his teeth. The brittle blade of his fury was in every line of the unfamiliar form. “I am _Járnsaxa_ , and you have freed me from your service. I might go wherever I please.”

Loki had always had cruel aim, as terrible as it was true. Thor closed his eyes. The decision he asked of him now was but a disaster waiting to happen. But then, his heart skipped a beat. Thor always had loved chaos. It had after all been his constant companion for centuries, the truest heart of the storms that both tempered and taunted his berserker soul.

“Then let me remain ever always at your side,” he said, rough and hoarse. And Loki only laughed.

“Oh, _Thor_.” The fingers upon his cheek burned, an ice that knew not how to melt. “How nice to see that you have finally learned to listen to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you just lose faith a little in a story, which is why it took longer than expected for this chapter to come. The next one is the last of those from Thor's POV, and then we move on to Loki. I do know this story from start to finish, if not the finer details; the next chapter is fully outlined, at least. It won't be so long in coming, but after that I can't be sure. Either way, if you are still here with me, thank you. This is such an odd little story and I never expected to get this far with it, especially not with any sort of audience. You are wonderful, and I can only hope I do your faith some vague honour. <3


	12. 2.6: Knockout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is a little bit of a transitional chapter -- and the last one from Thor's POV. Unfortunately that means there's apt to be a bit of a delay in the next chapters, because Loki makes everything unnecessarily complicated. While I do know the flow of his contribution, given the way he tends to screw things up I think I need to write large chunks of said chapters before I post any of them. That does mean, at least, that when they come they're likely to be thick and fast.
> 
> Thank you for sticking with me this far. <3

The depth of his mistake became hideously clear the moment they opened Jane’s front door. Darcy’s voice hit them all with the force of a hurricane loosed from a bottle, spiralling higher with every word. “Where the _hell_ have you guys been? I’ve been _freaking out_. And Ian’s been popping Minstrels like they’re goddamn Vicodin!”

Thor’s first thought – perhaps somewhat treacherous – was that at least Erik had not yet returned from the place he had gone to recover. Given the peculiar intimacies of their previous association, he had the distinct impression the astrophysicist would recognise Loki no matter his physical differences. Loki had been in his mind. And once Loki had been allowed in there, one might never be free of him again.

_Ask me how I know_.

“…oh my god, did you guys go to the planet from _Avatar_ or what?”

Ian’s tone hovered somewhere between exasperated and fearful. “Darcy, I don’t think that’s a real planet.”

“Well, it totally must be. They got a guy from there and everything.” Despite the significant height difference, Darcy actually bent forward from the waist to peer more closely at Loki; he had resumed the more outwardly masculine of his Jötunn forms, and glanced down at her with clear disdain. She didn’t even notice, pulling her cardigan tighter about her ample bosom as she beamed over at Jane. “Hey, can you get me an Ewok or something next time?”

“ _No_.”

“Come on, border control has nothing to do with your portals. They don’t even know they _exist_. It’ll be fine.” Her conspiratorial tone turned pleading. “And I’ll feed it and take it for walks and everything.”

With an elegant step backward, Loki spoke to no-one in particular. “I did rather forget how much of a headache these mortals give me.”

“Wait, you’ve been here before?” Squinting, Darcy pulled her glasses slightly further down her nose so she could examine him even closer yet. “Hey, do you know James Cameron?”

“Darcy, enough.”

Jane’s irritation held only the faintest hint of anxiety; that alone was enough to set Thor’s own teeth on edge. “Okay. Sure. So, are you going to introduce me to your newest intergalactic companion? Because if he’s got the time to sit down and answer a few questions, I’d love to know what kind of political system runs the administration of his planet, and what his opinions are on democracy versus theocracy versus socialism, and if the three are mutually exclusive or able to co-exist in a stable self-sustaining system.”

And now she had her face buried in her hands, her reply almost more groan than actual word. “Oh _god_.”

For a moment the silence held, thick enough to be grabbed about a non-existent neck and throttled. Then Ian cleared his throat, hands digging deep into his pockets as he cast his eyes about the group like a deer evaluating the darkening forest. “Does…anyone want a cup of tea?”

The terrible charm of Loki’s smile made Thor want to punch him in the face. “Please,” he said, utterly pleasant, and Darcy threw her hands into the air.

“At least the Navi dude’s got manners.”

“He’s not Navi,” Jane snapped. “He’s _Loki_.”

From the expression of horror that overtook her face but a second later, it was clear Jane would have done terrible things to take those words back. And yet Loki laughed, clear and clean, and Darcy’s entire body went tense and still. “I…holy fucking shit.” Her jaw set. Thor had seen such determination on many a warrior on the front line of battle. “Ian, get me my Taser.”

Thor moved in front of his brother without a single conscious thought, voice soft but warning. “Darcy, do not.”

And she turned on him, dark hair flying, one finger pushed squarely in the centre of his torso. “Watch it, buddy, or you’re getting it too. Again.”

It took a moment, a deep stabilising breath, before he could speak with the low calm he wished most for. It did not help that he could all but feel his brother vibrating with silent laughter behind him. “Loki is not here to harm you.”

“Yeah, he’s just a lovely little blue man who comes in peace to phone home. _Ian_ , where’s the bloody Taser at?”

In fact he had not moved, instead remaining steadfast at her side, eyes slightly unfocused as if he could see right through Thor to Loki himself. “It’s not charged.”

“For fuck’s sake,” she said, expression so dire Thor couldn’t help but be glad it was not entirely fixed upon him alone. “You could have still gotten it. A weapon’s a weapon, loaded or not!”

Before she could turn and do it herself, a hand closed on her shoulder. “Darcy.” That got her attention, though Jane winced under the force of her glare. “Things are kind of…weird, right now.”

“No kidding. What was your first clue? The genocidal maniac in your Mom’s house?”

A glance back, and Thor met his brother’s eyes; the grin on his face was not helping matters at all. Jane sounded almost helpless when she spoke. “Look, can we all just…sit down? Or something?”

Almost tripping over his own eagerness, Ian turned to make a clumsy exit. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

This time it was Darcy who rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Oh, _Christ_.”

It left four of them sitting awkwardly in the living room: Jane on the couch with Darcy, Loki lounging in an armchair wearing an expression of lazy disdain while Thor hovered very close with his hip pressed firm against one arm. Darcy continued to glower, clearly unhappy with the silent ceasefire; it wasn’t much of a relief when Ian came in with five cups and a plate of what seemed to be some sort of strawberry tart.

“You are so English,” Darcy muttered as he put first the tray of cups down, then the smaller dish; to Thor’s mind, he’d rarely seen even servants with as much deft grace at such an act. Ian still looked shame-faced when he curled two hands about porcelain, melting down into a place between Jane and Darcy.

“Sorry.”

“Fuck’s sake.” She was the first to take what must have been a burning swallow of her tea. Then she slammed the cup back on the table with enough force to have it sloshing in five directions. “So what the hell is going on?”

Even as Thor cleared his throat to speak, Loki snorted; he hadn’t moved to touch either cup or plate. “I am not sure myself. Tell me, brother, why are we kowtowing to the whims of some mortal chit who does not appear to even have the same tactical use as Dr. Foster here?”

“Because she’s my friend.” Both lips and knuckles were white, Jane’s hands clamped firmly about her upper arms. “But maybe you’re not real familiar with the concept of friends.”

“Jane, please,” Thor began, but under the dark blaze of her glare he couldn’t be sure how to go on. With again a remarkably steady hand Ian leaned forward, took up the plate to offer it about the group.

“Biscuit?”

Darcy was looking at him like he was some exotic creature fallen from the sky – quite a feat on his behalf, considering there were _two_ such literal creatures sitting kitty-corner to him – but it was Jane who spoke again, dragging a hand back through the tangle of her hair.

“What actually is your major?”

“Sociology. And anthropology.” Even though Ian put the plate back down with startling dignity, Thor could see a faint blush creeping up his neck as his eyes darted first to Loki, then Thor, then back to the two women. “Study of the human race and its cultural constructs, I guess.”

Loki gave Ian a considering look. Something to the tilt of it had the hairs on the back of Thor’s neck rising. “Darcy, this is but a temporary measure,” he began, and her eyes rolled so hard the force of it ought to have propelled them right out of her head.

“What, you’ve got your little brother in a rehabilitation programme or something?” Then her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “Wait, isn’t he _dead_? Did you _raise the dead_ , Thor?”

“It was not my intention.”

“I fucking knew it.” Flumphing back into the chair, Darcy covered both glasses and eyes, feet rising from the floor before dropping down in a furious clunk. “Why did I let you two go off to see that witch without me, again?”

Loki’s attention shifted to Thor with an amusement he liked no better than his interest in Ian. Folding his hands carefully together, Thor attempted a warning look. It only served to remind him of how many times he’d ignored the same from Loki himself. “I meant in how long we are staying. We are planning our next move, and then we will go.”

The sideways look Darcy now gave his brother said much for what she thought of his idea of temporary. “You know if SHIELD sees him here, it’s going to be a shitstorm and a half.”

“We realise that,” Jane said, with a sharpness of purpose that couldn’t help but remind him of Frigga; from the barely perceptible flinch upon Loki’s face, he’d noticed it too. Jane, however, had focused entirely upon Darcy alone, with the kind of look that invited no argument. “Which is why you’re not going to tell them,” she added, and Darcy just shook her head, expression disbelieving.

“And if they just _notice_? What’s going to happen to us? Shipped off to Area 51 or vanished or something? Because believe you me, I bet they don’t bother with witness protection programmes for this sort of shit.”

Much as he wanted to reach out, closing a hand over hers, Thor could not help but debate whether she still had some small lightning device concealed about her person despite the earlier discussion. “I will let no harm come to you,” he settled for instead, and she screwed up her nose.

“Except you kind of dragged your brother back from the dead. What if _he_ wants to harm us?” Though her eyes had gone very hard, there was a sheen of brightness to them that twisted Thor’s heart tighter still. “Because I’m kind of doubting where your priorities are right now.”

“We are working to save all the Nine Realms and beyond.”

Not only did this bold pronouncement elicit an inelegant snort from his little brother, Darcy looked aghast more than impressed. “What, _again_?” Any tremor her hands might have held was well-masked by the fists she balled them into. “You know, the only constant I’m seeing lately in this “the whole universe is at stake” game is you.”

“Darcy!”

Loki shifted at his side, and Thor had never felt more unworthy of Jane’s trust and defence. “It is true.” One long finger poked him low in the back, cold even through his armour; Thor ignored it, kept his attention instead upon the mortals who stood to suffer the most personal losses should he be wrong in any of this. “My presence in your lives has not brought you great security, nor safety.”

The finger dropped away, but Loki’s voice rang very clear through the small space. “And yet there is the fact that he is quite entitled to ignore you all and let the more evolved use your backwater little planet for their own purposes.”

Turning around, Thor didn’t bother to hide the crackle of his rising temper. “Stop it.”

“Why?” Loki appeared quite genuinely baffled, and showed no concern in the face of his brother’s anger. “Midgardians have always had an inflated sense of their own purpose in the greater scheme of things. Why not let them discover they are little more than a knot in the great Tree, a wasp’s colony that might as well be eradicated for all the good their presence does anyone else?”

Jane’s hand slapped down with such force upon the small table that even Loki flinched. “Right. No. This is not the debate here.” Even as Thor’s heart swelled with renewed gratefulness, she glared at him in a way that would have disembowelled a lesser being. “We need to work out where we are going. Then we need to get the hell out. Okay? Okay.”

Darcy, having pulled her legs up beneath her, scrunched up her face into an unhappy configuration that made her look rather like a troubled toddler. “What are you even fighting this time anyway?”

“His name is Thanos.”

Ian’s lips twisted about the name, eyes troubled. “Thanatos?”

“No, _Thanos_.” For all the irritation in his voice, Loki answered quick and clear – and then even embellished without encouragement. “He had command over the Chitauri homeworld, and I did not deliver him the tesseract as promised.”

“Oh, so this is _your_ fault?” With arms now folded over her generous chest, Darcy curled further in upon herself and let a scowl drag her face into something rather ugly. “How about we just hand you over and call it done?”

The crash of thunder overhead rattled the windows in their ancient frames. “ _No_.”

“See, this is what I was talking about!”

“All right, stop it. All of you.” Jane’s face had gone very pale, but the brightness of her eyes was the sheen of hard steel. Even her friend shrank back ever so slightly when she whipped around to face her. “Darcy, we are _not_ handing people over to galactic villains, okay?”

At first shock held her to silence. Then, colour bloomed high in Darcy’s cheeks while her voice trembled on the high precipice between anger and shock. “Jane, he’s a war criminal!”

“He’s my brother!”

“And he will not go quietly,” Loki added with a helpfulness too gleeful to be useful. Thor had turned to give him a warning glare when Darcy poked the air with sharp condemnation.

“See! _See_!”

Yet even as Jane looked ready to smother one or the another or both with the nearest cushion, Ian sat up very straight between them. His hands were white-knuckled but very steady about his teacup. “What is it that you need to stop this Thanos?” That even voice, though low, was enough to draw all attention to him. He did not flinch, only continued to stare at Thor even though Loki’s curious gaze could not have been an easy thing for any mortal to bear. He cleared his throat, held his chin higher. “Because you are on a quest, right?”

Darcy groaned. “Oh god, I knew we shouldn’t have watched _The Hobbit_ last night.”

To his credit his confidence was not shaken by Darcy’s clear secondhand embarrassment. Instead he kept looking to Thor. “No, seriously. You were saying you need to work out where to go next. Are you looking for something?”

“The infinity stones,” Thor replied, slow, thoughtful. “They are mostly legend, but not.”

Clearly turning the thought over in his head, Ian fell very quiet. A moment later, Darcy sat up straight.

“If he’s your brother, then why is he _blue_?”

“The infinity stones,” Ian repeated, even as Thor closed a warning hand over Loki’s thigh. “Are they scattered across the realms, or something?”

A jerk of his leg upward meant Loki shook Thor’s grip free, but he still remained tensed for quick action as he replied to Ian. “Some have been hidden. Others have been lost to known memory. We know the location of at least four of them, to varying degrees of accessibility. The other two we are still trying to locate.”

“Do you have any idea where these two might be?”

“Yes.”

This time Loki pinched him, twisting a chunk of skin tight in his long fingers. “Thor, why are we playing story time with the little mortal?”

Swatting the hand away – Loki always had moved too quick to be caught in such matters – Thor glared. “Do you have any genuine reason why I should not ask his advice?”

At first Loki only stared. Then that damned smile widened, a serpent undulating its coils in the noonday sun.

“No.” The nod he gave held an imperious air. “Do continue.”

The urge to reach over and slap said smile off Loki’s face made his mouth taste of ozone and burned sky. But then Thor had been controlling it for centuries. Instead he looked back to Ian, tried to ignore the way the poor mortal half-wilted beneath the barely contained anger that was not even directed at him. “The six infinity stones have individual properties of their own,” he said with remarkable equanimity, “but together can give a single person unspeakable power. We know of an entity who wishes to collect them, and therefore it is our duty to prevent it from happening.”

“Or maybe your brother just wants to get them for himself.”

One of Jane’s elbows dug deep into her friend’s side, eliciting a yelp. “Darcy, shut up.”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

But Thor overrode them both. In a voice both low and urgent, he spoke briefly on the tesseract, which they knew from stories of New York; then of the aether, which they had a more personal knowledge of. Even Loki held his silence through his brother’s explanations of next Sullt and Hungr and then the Vanadís, though Thor could feel the faint disapproval as he no doubt mangled the truth of them both.

By the time they came to what little was known of the time and reality stones, Ian’s perpetual troubled expression had turned very thoughtful. Thor allowed himself a brief flare of hope. While he’d spent only short days in the company of this mortal, he had found him to be a quick study on many fronts. Perhaps Ian would never be a great warrior in a physical sense, but he had instincts that would serve him well; this was a man to win by tactics, rather than brute force.

It was no wonder Loki had found him at least somewhat intriguing, no matter how he maintained his disinterest and gathered his information through a proxy. For his own part, Ian himself did not look once at his brother, attention switching instead between Jane and Thor. The line bisecting his brow deepened with every slow word.

“So because of that tapestry you guys saw about the story, you think maybe the time stone is something to do with Yggdrasil?” Ian asked, one finger tracing the edge of his teacup. Thor nodded.

“Details of this particular story have always been scarce, or at least not interesting enough to catch the attention of the skalds and bards. I remember little more than this myself. And our mother always had great insight.”

“Did it remind you of any other representation you have seen of Yggdrasil?”

Such academic matters were not Thor’s strength. He could not begrudge Loki for answering in his place, quiet and thoughtful as the answer was. “Not in a traditional sense, no.”

“But it must have been Yggdrasil,” Thor said, and Ian shook his head.

“I guess it makes sense,” he granted. “But is Yggdrasil the only tree that it could have been? Because sure, I get the time connection, but…it’s kind of the basis of all reality, right? At least for the Nine Realms?”

Jane frowned, mind very quick where it followed his. “You think it could be the reality stone?”

“Some aspect of it, maybe.” When he ran both hands over his head, it left his hair sticking up in crazy directions; Darcy stared at him like again he’d become an alien, but in his animation he scarcely seemed to notice. “Like you said, the water of the Well: it feeds the Tree. It makes it grow. In that way, Yggdrasil _is_ our reality. It is our universe.”

“Then what might the time stone be?”

Ian swallowed hard. “Well, the other tree I’m thinking of is the magic apple tree.”

Loki’s eyes widened, even as Thor felt a thrum of excitement. “Iðunn,” he breathed, and Ian nodded so hard and swift that it looked like his head might break free of his neck.

“You said the story said the guy she loved was a bit of an asshole.” Despite his clear excitement, he looked somewhat apprehensive as he went on; Thor supposed he’d just remembered that while these people were but mythological figures to him, they were potentially close friends to others. “I remember hearing Bragi wasn’t really all that good for her.”

Loki spoke, distant, almost dreaming. “Her wish was to hold back time.”

Something in that tone did not sit well with Thor. When he glanced to Loki he could remember how he had fallen without a sound, hands held out but not upwards. Thor had screamed, Thor had reached for him. And Loki had been silent as the void swallowed him whole. “But it did no such thing,” Thor said, with great difficulty. “She grew older.”

The look his brother turned on him was both withering and weary. “She wished her time with Bragi would never end.” Then he glanced away, down to his hands. Thor flinched, remembering how they had opened from about Gungnir’s haft. “It seems the time stone took that wish literally.”

“Then where is it?” Jane asked, her voice uncertain. “The infinity stone, I mean. What’s it likely to be?”

His scorn was caustic enough to burn through steel. Jane still met his gaze evenly. “We shall have to ask Iðunn.”

“Can you _do_ that?”

“Iðunn is rarely enough seen,” Thor said, brow furrowed. Loki himself also seemed to be considering the idea from multiple angles, though Jane voiced her own before anyone else came to a conclusion.

“You said there was a festival. Where you had a harvest. And gave apples to those you…those you loved.” The stumble drew Loki’s eyes to her like iron filings to lodestone. But Jane kept her attention upon Thor alone, lovely face relaxed and pale. “Doesn’t she bring those apples to you? So you can give them away?”

He swallowed very hard. “Handmaidens do.” Even as he could not help but feel elation at the thought of potentially finding another of the stones, his heart tightened at the thought of childhood myths undone. “And it has long been said that Iðunn is a title more than a name, passed on through the generations. If this is true, then our Iðunn is in fact the same as the one of legend.”

“Have you met her?”

“Once.” It took a long moment to marshal his thoughts. The entire time Loki’s eyes were very hard on him. “She was a withered old woman. She frightened me.”

The scepticism on Darcy’s face had reached a level that was dangerously close to making him laugh; much as he doubted she could hurt him, he had no doubt that she would try. “ _You_?”

“I was very young.” He sobered quickly; the memory held the uncomfortable weight of dust and spiderwebs, brushed away from locked trunks best left that way. “She looked at me like she wished to swallow me up. Or perhaps drink of me until the years fell away.” The sharp intake of breath came from Jane; the low whistle was Darcy. But it was the weight of Loki’s eyes upon him that felt heaviest as he looked down to his hands, shook his head. “I would wonder how I forgot that. But then I have tried since then never to remember it.”

A pin could have dropped in the room and been audible a mile away. Then Ian let out a slow breath, somewhere between uncertain and relieved. “I think maybe that’s it. You need Iðunn’s tree. Or maybe the apple it grew from.”

A flurry of movement at his side jerked Thor’s attention upwards. Loki had rocked forward in the chair and to his feet; he did not look to his brother even when Thor lurched forward, took him about the wrist. He just kept moving forward until his arm drew back, taut as a fishing line hooked to its prey, eyes fixed upon the door. Thor’s mouth felt very dry, tasted of old blood.

“Loki.”

His voice held a distant air, low and dry. “I must be alone, for a moment.”

“Why?”

“Because I cannot stand to be near you.”

The dull words were more effective that any physical attempt to break free. Thor dropped his wrist, reared away; Loki still did not turn, leaving his brother only staring at the tense lines of his slender back. And then his shoulders shook; Thor had seen the same movement of his brother both when in the throes of amusement, or caught in the grip of harrowing sobs.

Then he turned back, and his face was as blank as any Vanir mummer’s mask. “I will not go far.” Only one corner of his mouth twitched dangerously close to a smirk. “How can I, with my powers restrained?”

“Only by your word,” Thor said, very quiet. “And now you believe you know the location of all six of the stones.”

Loki moved so quick it echoed the strike of a stalking feline; Darcy’s strangled shriek was cut off by Ian yanking her close, Jane skittering back to the other end of the couch. Yet Thor only had eyes for his brother, who had pulled up short but an inch from him, eyes gleaming and furious. “Then chain me,” he snarled, and shook his hands in Thor’s impassive face. “Slap manacles around my wrists and throat and waist. Treat me like the beast I am! Make of me your slave!” And the way he twisted his head back despite not taking another step had Thor bracing to be spat upon. Instead Loki laughed, hollow and humourless, lips twisted. “I already am whether I wear your brand or not.”

He kept his temper only by a greater brute force that it would have taken to cuff his brother about the neck and throw him to the floor. “Loki,” he warned, very quiet, and Loki’s eyes rolled. Again, he raised his hands, wrists pressed together and palms cupped, fingers curved upwards like the spreading branches of holy Yggdrasil.

“Well?”

_If you betray me, I will kill you_. The past words hung heavy in his mind, but they were not the ones he repeated aloud. “I wish I could trust you.”

And Loki stepped back. “It would be better if you didn’t,” he advised, almost gentle. But the flare of his temper shone through in the furious tremor of his body, the gleam of his crimson eyes. “But then I always ask more of you than you can give.”

“Never satisfied,” Thor said, soft. This time Loki did laugh.

“And no surrender.”

“Go.” The roughness of his voice was the rasp of a serrated blade over stone. “I will come to you later.”

The curve of Loki’s mouth was a dangerous thing, a grin turned grimace turned grin; there would be blood beneath such a blood, whether his own or someone else’s. His hair flared like a raven’s wing when he moved for the door, an elegant figure in leather and fur. It opened, then closed, and he was gone. In his wake the mortals seemed to breathe again, though when Thor looked back his stomach lurched. He and his brother had fought like this since childhood, forces of nature unto themselves. In the wake of such fury his mortal friends seemed very small.

And then, amazingly, Darcy laughed.

“Well, I always figured he was a drama queen, but holy _shit_.”

At her side, face pinched and pale, Jane blinked, then baulked. “Darcy!”

“What? He is!”

Thor couldn’t be sure what it was that brought him down – the argument, the subsequent absence of his brother, or the fact that the mortals had seemed to take the entire situation far too quickly into their stride. Either way he sat heavily in the chair which Loki had only just vacated. Despite the difference in their mass it felt to curve around him in the shape of his brother’s body, holding an odd warmth. Both Jane and Darcy paid him no heed, glaring at one another; Ian’s eyes were moving between them and oddly Thor began to feel as if he himself had vanished with Loki, some imaginary creature pushed to the back of the mind.

“Look, does SHIELD know anything about this? My portals, I mean?” Jane asked, and Darcy’s scowl took on epic proportions.

“Honestly? No idea. Haven’t seen or heard from anyone.”

“Really?”

“Really really.” Jane’s disbelief sat ill with him, and Darcy seemed to shrink back in on herself as she leaned back into the couch, lips downturned. “It’s weird. But maybe something’s going down over yonder, I don’t know. Or maybe they just don’t have any jurisdiction in the land of bobbies and busbies.”

Despite the fatalistic tone Darcy had adopted, Ian had begun to shake his head. “We could call Officer Swain.”

The name meant very little to Thor; with some relief he saw his own confusion mirrored by Jane. “Who?”

“Oh, that dude you knocked over at the warehouses back when Thor whisked you off to the golden palace in the sky. Ian felt bad about him being hurt, went down to the hospital.” The expression Darcy wore vacillated between amusement and exasperation at an alarming speed. “He took him some flowers, even.”

“What?”

Ian’s hands rose as if warding off a blow, shrinking back into the couch. “I just wanted to say sorry!”

“It wasn’t even your fault!” Darcy retorted, but the affection shimmering in her gaze warmed Thor’s heart, even as something close to guilt crept into his own mind. It didn’t have opportunity to take hold, with Darcy scowling as she went on. “But Blinky Ben’s no good for information. Well, except when it comes to the races. Guy gave us some awesome tips.”

“ _Blinky Ben_.”

The insouciant shrug felt to be but one of the many sources of his imminent headache. “Hey, that’s what they call him at the station,” she said, yet she’d barely finished the last word when Thor lurched on his feet, shaking his head. When Jane glanced up in clear concern, he indicated the sliding glass door.

“I believe I need some air.”

She understood. It only sharpened the blade of that guilt, knowing she had deserved far more than he’d ever been able to offer her. Still, Darcy distracted him as she kicked out a foot, caught him in the shin; though he scarcely felt the blow, Thor glanced down to see her scowling up at him. “And who’s going to look after your crazy bro?”

“He will not go far.” Even with the distance between himself and his weapon, Thor knew all could feel Mjölnir’s answering hum as his fingers closed into his palm. “And neither shall I.”

 

*****

 

It had been scarcely dusk when they had returned to London. Now night had firmly settled over the vast city, though few stars could be seen from the heart of it. Thor had to content himself with the play of light from the sea of buildings, their configurations as alien as the sky itself would have been. The door moved behind him, though he remained still. He had no idea how long it had been, but his sense of Loki had not changed. Thor knew it was another who came to him now, and he kept his eyes upon the skyline. Shame had never been easy for him to bear.

“You scared me, you know.”

The quiet words held no condemnation, but still he felt something within him split like skin beneath a sword, the blood of it warm and bitter. _They will learn to fear me_ , he had said once, words echoing about a chamber of gold and seiðr. Sometimes he still wondered where that cocky prince had gone. “When?”

The fact that he could not be certain of which time she meant only made matters worse, though Jane seemed more thoughtful than anything else as she laid her hands upon the balcony’s sill. “On Jötunheimr. When you found out Loki was alive.”

For a moment, he closed his eyes. In that darkness, he could taste again the rage and the relief of knowing that his brother had fooled him once again, that he himself had fallen so willingly into another of his damned tricks. “You did not say anything.”

When he glanced to her, he found the returned gaze very wry. “Did I have to?”

“I am sorry.”

The look he wore must have been too miserable; she looked stricken, and then leaned forward, one hand over his. It looked so terribly small by comparison. “No, it’s not _that_. You don’t need to apologise. Not for that, at least. It’s just…” Her throat worked very hard, and the tremble of her hand upon his felt like the passage of a newly-emerged butterfly’s wings. “…I can’t imagine you ever having a reaction like that over me.”

Though his throat seized, he spoke his next words with an ease that alarmed him. “I doubt you would do to me as Loki has and will do again.”

“Well, that’s it. It’s Loki.” When she pulled her hand away, it was to shove both of them deep into the pockets of the oversized cardigan belted about her slim waist. “He’s done horrible things to you, and you even admit he’ll do them again, and you hate him but you love him and I just don’t _get_ it.”

Spoken in such a way, Thor had to wonder what they had done to make the Norns play with them so. “Neither do I.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

There was a faint levity to her words, but Thor could not find amusement in any of it, not knowing what he yet held back from her. Loki’s demands meant little when he reached forward, rested one hand upon her neck so that he might cradle her cheek. “Jane, I will not force your involvement any further in any of this.”

“No, you won’t. But I will. I was here for the start of it, and I want to be there at the end.” She met his gaze with even confidence, understated, simple. “Maybe I’m not a warrior, but this is still my life. This is what I wanted. And even if these infinity stones just wind up being hidden or destroyed or whatever, they’re still scientific wonders. Answers to questions we don’t even know how to ask for.”

Then she was turning away, pulling back from his gentle touch. When she looked up, even with the cloud cover and light pollution, he had no doubt she looked at the stars and knew them for what they are.

“And you are my friend,” she said, soft but very strong. “We’re from different worlds. But we have a connection. We’re all connected. We can work together.”

“The warrior from Asgard, the sorcerer from Jötunheimr, and the scientist from Midgard?”

Jane chanced a glance over one shoulder, gave him a crooked smile. “I don’t know how much Loki would like being called that, but sure.”

Even as he knew himself to have misstepped in word again, Thor glanced back over his shoulder, saw the glow of golden light between the heavy curtains. “I should apologise to Darcy.”

“Oh, she’s busy eyeballing your brother.”

That had his heart lurching, muscles tensed to readiness; though his sense of his brother was hardly as specific as something based in seiðr, Mjölnir had not once given him any indication of imminent danger. “I thought Loki had gone to my room.”

“Yeah, but she camped outside the door,” Jane said, one eyebrow raised. Aghast, Thor could only stare.

“Is she mad?”

“Yes.” Then she laughed, but her eyes held no humour, fixed as they were upon him. “He came out eventually. Now they’re all just sitting in the living staring at the television. Which isn’t on. Well, Ian’s on his third pot of tea, but same difference.” Though she paused a long moment, he heard her next words long before she spoke them aloud. “You shouldn’t have left him alone, not now that we think we know where all of them are.”

The stone bowed beneath the pressure of his fingers upon it. “You do not need to tell me this,” he said, very quiet; Jane shook her hair back from her face, did not look away.

“Then why did you do it?”

“It is the way things are, between us.”

He owed her more than those short words, he knew. That he had never intended these things to happen was no excuse; that continued association with them both furthered her research was no adequate boon to balance out the lies he had told her, whether by omission or otherwise. When he glanced up his tongue folded around unspoken words, poised upon the break of a promise.

Then she sighed, and it was just a moment too late, her hands pushing her back from the balcony’s low wall. “I might go talk to Loki about how we’re going to get to Yggdrasil. If we need to calibrate my portals.” Her slim shoulders shrugged beneath the heavy cable-knit of her cardigan. “Because I guess the next plan’s to go to Asgard, and we might as well go in the front door if your father’s just going to realise that your brother’s still alive.”

Thor nodded, his tongue still thick, troubled with the truths he did not let loose. “Speak with him about it. See what he says.”

She gave a humourless laugh. “You think he’ll co-operate?”

His own grin held a bitter edge, though he turned it upon himself. “He considers you an integral part of the plan.”

“But as a person, or as a tool?” She must have sensed the way he stiffened – or perhaps she heard the distant growl of thunder, the cool rising breeze upon her cheek. “It doesn’t matter, Thor. I’m in it either way.”

He watched her go. Only when the glass door had snicked softly closed did he turn back to the skyline. He had never been the type to run from a problem. But then, Loki had never been the type to stand still when he was at the heart of any disaster. Thor closed his eyes. He would go back inside, in a moment. When he felt sure Loki would not be gone the moment he returned.

 

*****

 

_“I fear we have been poor guests.”_

_Freyja looked up from where she sat at the water’s edge, the panther at her side unmoving. “Not at all,” she said, and beckoned him closer. Her bare feet sketched lazy circles in the water, the silver scales of the fish flashing in the early morning light. Despite the open invitation Thor did not sit down beside her. After a moment she snorted, shrugged her shoulders; the fine mesh of her veil glittered like thin fog over her dark hair. “It was nothing, Thor. Freyr’s like all boys, and so are you! My brother just enjoys any and all opportunity to thrust whatever hard long object he has in hand about the place in some silly attempt to prove himself. I’ve been dealing with it for years, haven’t I?”_

_Her hand traced light over the curve of the feline’s boxy skull. A low purr rumbled through its great chest, and though it did not move Thor still kept a watchful eye upon the light twitch of its tail, its paws. “I would suppose so.”_

_“Yes, Loki and I rather did have that in common.” He could not hide his wince, but Freyja went on regardless, attention having moved back to where the Vanir sun climbed gracefully up from behind the horizon. “It is odd indeed – for while we often saw Loki here without you, it was rare indeed to see you without him.”_

_He still could not be sure what Freyja did and did not understand about her most recent guests. He suspected he might never know. “Vanaheimr always suited him better,” Thor said, soft, and Freyja swatted lightly at his calf._

_“Oh, we always had much to offer you, too. If you but paused long enough to look.”_

_With such a thickened throat, he could not have spoken even if he’d had any idea what to say._

_“But you did well by Járnsaxa.” Pulling her feet back from the pool, Freyja flowed easy to her feet; her head tilted as she rested one hand upon his upper arm, smile only faintly crooked. “Freyr never did intend anything unwanted towards her. He never need force a conquest. But it was a good thing you did.”_

_He forced a chuckle. “Driven as it was by jealousy and rage?”_

_“All actions are driven by something. It is inaction that tends to be dispassionate.” Her fingers trailed saltwater over his skin, a sparkling trail left in her wake as she let her hand fall. Her dark eyes could have held the universe entire, starless and new. “And you are a creature of action, Thor Odinson. Take that with you into your kingship, and you will do what must be done.”_

_Even in the early morning humidity, he shivered. “I am not king.”_

_“But you will be.” Her kiss was light upon his lips, susurrated like the incoming tide where she whispered into his ear, “Be well, stormlord. All the realms have much need of you, yet.”_

 

*****

 

“Dinner’s ready.” The body that had joined him at the balcony swayed with considerable force into his; he rocked easily with the movement. “And you’re doing the dishes, by the way, seeing as you totally didn’t help us make it.”

His smile was true, though faint. “It seems fair trade.”

Thor did not need to look at Darcy to know she wore an expression he’d had from Loki a hundred thousand times before – the one that said _I already knew I was right, idiot_. But her tone lightened as she followed the reflective path of his gaze. “What are you looking at?”

“The city.”

“Yeah, well. She’s a crazy old bird. Or so Ian says. Though he’s actually from Kent.” Her expression turned distant, face screwed up in thought. “I don’t even know where Kent is.”

Thor did not either, but kept it to himself. “He is a good man.”

“He is.” The long-nailed finger clenched tight about the flaking masonry edge of the balcony. “And if Loki hurts him, I’m going to rip his liver out. After that it’ll be Chianti and fava beans all the way. I’m a hell of a cook when I want to be, you know. And I’ll fucking want to be then.”

“I understand,” he murmured, and from the expression on her face she knew that while the reference had flown right by him the sentiment was clear as any clarion bell. Her expression too was dark and fierce, that of a Valkyrie circling above the heads of berserker warriors below. And then, quite suddenly, her shoulders slumped and her head fell forward, her hands rising to cover her mouth. Thor said not a word, and when she glanced up again Darcy’s eyes were soft and strange behind the clear glass she wore over them.

“Look, I’m sorry.” Shifting on her feet, she wrapped her hands about her upper arms, shivering as if the temperature had reset itself to zero. And yet she ploughed ever onward, voice fierce as her soul. “About what I said, I mean. The whole _this is all your fault_ crap.”

Thor only nodded. “To some degree it is very likely true.”

“Yeah, but it’s not your _fault_. And you don’t have to help fix it.”

“It is the right thing to do.” That earned him a sceptical laugh, one than made his own returning grin half wan and awkward. “And you are my friends. In many ways, that is more important.”

He’d meant it in comfort, yet even before she spoke Darcy was shaking her head. “And he’s your brother,” she said, quiet, eyes unblinking. Thor nodded, did not look away. He owed her that much, at least.

“He is.” Her sigh held such a resigned note; he had never appreciated feeling helpless in the face of inevitable battle. “Do you have siblings of your own?” he asked, sudden. Her own reply had a high note of surprise.

“Me? No. And it’s better that way. I had enough trouble looking after myself when I was growing up.” Thoughtful became troubled upon her features, those generous lips again twisted around her tongue. “So maybe I don’t really understand how it works. Though I’m not sure even someone _with_ a brother or sister would understand what’s going on between you two.”

His spine stiffened, as if lightning had drawn sharp fingers down the centre of his back. “Darcy—”

“No. No details.” And she looked up at him from under her brow, one corner of her mouth quirked up in a defeated grin. “Though I kind of want them. In that sick part of my brain that doesn’t care that he tried to blow up New York and probably totally traumatised some nice old German dude with Holocaust memories.” Thor had only the vaguest idea of what she meant, but then he knew enough to realise she had always been more resourceful than he’d ever thought. It certainly explained why she alluded to something some traitorous part of him still hoped Jane had not, even as all amusement fled her face. “But there is one thing I have to ask, okay?”

“Certainly.”

“If he goes feral. If he tries to take these magic stones of magicness and rule the universe with a mischief fist.” He did not realise how she trembled until she went to take a deep breath and couldn’t. Her voice held a winded air when she all but whispered, “Will you stop him?”

He stood so still and so cold he might as well have been the recently decapitated statue of his grandfather. “I can,” Thor said, very careful. Her snort was explosive, salt-laced laughter.

“No, _will_ you.”

“I will do as I must.”

Pushing her hands up behind her glasses, pushing fingers had against her eyes, Darcy shook her head so that the loose waves whipped about her head. “No, not getting a lot of confidence, here.”

This time he did seek to touch her. With both hands light upon her shoulders, he turned her so that they stood face to face, dipping his upper body down low. Everything about her beneath his fingers seemed so light, and terribly fragile, even before she raised her eyes to him.

“I will not let harm come to the worlds simply for the sake of keeping my brother by my side.”

Something in her eyes then was like a child seeing the monster beneath her bed for the first time. “See, I don’t think you’re lying.” And she laughed, bitter and aching. “But I still don’t believe you.”

It hurt, and very deep. “Darcy.”

Taking first one step, and then another back from him, Darcy raised her chin and gave a defiant nod. “I’m just glad Jane’s with you. Not that I want her to get hurt. But maybe she’ll remind you. Of the rest of us.”

In a flurry of bright-knit wool and tartan, she was gone. Though the weather was hardly chill by the measure of his far hardier constitution, Thor still felt very cold when he moved inside. He could not decide whether it was for the best that they all remained very quiet over their late dinner. Even Loki said scarcely a word, displaying the type of table manners that could not help but remind all about him that recent events aside, he had been raised a prince and a gentleman.

Still, when all was over and tidied away and Jane announced she would be retiring to her own chamber for some decent sleep before the events of the next day, Darcy’s expression darkened like a cloud swelling with rain. “So where’s _he_ going to sleep?”

Loki seemed utterly unperturbed by the accusing finger she all but shoved in his face, though Thor didn’t bother hiding a wince. Across the way, slung upon the hook that had wordlessly become hers, Mjölnir gave a warning twinge. “He can sleep with me.”

The odd look reminded him of the way she’d evaluated him on the balcony but an hour before. “Yeah, what?”

“We are brothers, Darcy.”

Such reminder had her pursing her lips. “Yeah, okay. I just…yeah. Because you know, you sure don’t _look_ related.”

“That is a long story,” he said with a finality he could but hope would discourage further discussion. But then, Darcy Lewis had always been a force unto herself.

“Yeah, well, I have the time, you have the tools. Let’s talk it out.”

Loki’s voice slithered into the conversation with smooth amusement, his body so close to his brother’s that they might almost have appeared joined at the hip. “If Thor wishes to regale you with tales of my ignominious adoption into his family, then by all means, let him do so. I am taking to my bed, so if you will excuse me?”

He caught his elbow, held fast. “I will come with you.”

“Oh, will you?”

They were staring at each other in entirely the wrong manner and Thor knew it. Loki knew it too, judging by the smile that played at his lips. “You should not be left alone.”

“Yes, who knows what mischief I might get up to in a tiny room in a mortal house?” he said with easy disdain, and Darcy snorted.

“Tony Stark built the first Iron Man suit in an Afghani cave with a box of scraps. I’m sure a god of mischief could do at _least_ as good as that.”

“Don’t give him ideas,” Jane objected, and even as Loki purposefully put on an exaggerated thoughtful look Thor rolled his eyes, dug his fingers deep into the sparse flesh of his brother’s upper arm.

“I will stay with him.”

Jane said nothing further as Thor turned, hauling his brother after him. It hurt, especially when Darcy added, “Watch out for them bedbugs.”

Only when they were alone in the little room did Loki speak, having flung himself down upon one of the small twinned beds. It was scarcely long enough to contain the lankiness of his limbs in their leather. “Are all mortals so very insane, or do you just tend to associate with that particular flavour of them?”

“Darcy is Darcy.” Loki’s scowl said that was no answer at all, but then Thor had long since decided that Jane’s companion defied such definitions. Instead he swung an open palm about the small room. “Do you actually wish to sleep, or were you just trying to get away from me?”

“Pick one.” But Loki did not wait for him to do so. Instead he moved to the bathroom, though he not linger there long. By the time Thor returned from his own trip Loki had moved to stand at the window, eyes fixed upon the city below. Without word nor invitation Thor came to stand at his side, one hand light upon the peeling paint of the windowsill.

“It reminds me of the Medina.”

Though he supposed he ought to just take pleasure in that Loki had spoken first, Thor frowned. Seeing things as Loki did had never come easily to him, but any similarity the city of London held to the lower, older quarters of Asgard seemed at best superficial to him. “Really? How so?”

“So little space. Everything pressed close together.”

Thor gave a little shrug. “Not really your preferred environment.”

“On the contrary.” When Loki’s head turned, his breath skittered across Thor’s skin, raising the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. “More shadows to hide in. People passing by with secrets on their lips and knives in their hands. A wealth of opportunity.”

With an abrupt jerk Thor turned his back on both the city and the night. “Could you close the curtains? I wish to change.”

“Modesty does not become you.”

“Perhaps not, but the mortal habit of disseminating images about the world does make me somewhat wary, if only because I do not wish to advertise our presence so loudly.”

“Very well, then.” Long fingered hands closed over the drapery, pulled the two halves close together. He did not take to his bed. Rather, Loki chose to lean back against the wall with arms folded over his chest. Dressed in his light tunic alone, it fell to mid-thigh while his elegant ankles crossed. With the line and curve of the markings, his legs looked to go on forever.

Turning away, Thor moved to strip away the borrowed clothing, letting it fall at his feet. It would have been the work of moments to retrieve some of the Midgardian sleepwear Jane had helped him acquire, but then he had always preferred to sleep nude. Leaving the drawers closed, Thor pulled back the bedcovers of one of the two small beds instead. With every flex and shift of muscle beneath bare skin, he could feel the press of eyes upon him.

With his face turned resolutely to the wall and covers pulled up to his shoulders, Thor closed his eyes. “Turn off the light, would you?”

A click turned the world to darkness. With a sigh, Thor let his muscles relax. A moment later they tensed against the slide of a body behind him. Where Loki stopped, it left them skin to skin; before he had come to his brother, he had slipped off his own tunic.

Thor did not move. “You have your own bed.”

Light laughter rippled over the soft flesh of the skin behind his jaw, trembled beneath the curve of his ear. “When we were children, that never stopped us.”

“We are not children now.”

“No.” He only shifted closer. At the press of a hardening shaft along the crease of his ass, his own cock gave an interested twitch. Even as Thor set his jaw, he felt Loki smile against one broad shoulder, the ensuing whisper trailing like ice against the warmth of his skin. “No, we are no longer children at all.”

Few mistakes had ever seemed so clear to him before they were made. Thor turned around all the same. The single bed pressed them so very close together; he scarcely needed to move at all before their legs had tangled, hips slotting against one another. It was so easy to begin a light thrust, circling, cocks hardening by the moment. Breaths came quicker, foreheads pressing together as if they were twins in the womb, two souls in their own world.

“What are we doing?” Thor whispered, and Loki’s familiar laughter tasted of winter against his lips.

“I thought this was what you wanted.”

His own humourless chuckle had the faintest flavour of a faded summer. “You said you didn’t know what you wanted.”

The flick of a tongue rasped over the strong line of his jaw, and then teeth closed over the lobe of his ear. “I suppose I can only try and see what sticks.”

“We are guests in this house.”

Loki bit down, hard; Thor jerked his head, and he let go with a chuckle. “So stop, then.”

“You will only keep going,” Thor muttered. His own fingers traced down the hollow channel of his brother’s spine, fitted over hip and buttock; the air in his lungs burned as he thrust hard against hot skin. Loki’s laughter spiralled upward even as he ground back.

“Oh, so this is my fault, then?” With arms hooked up under his brother’s, he dug fingers into shoulders, whispered against his throat: “Always Loki. Always the trickster.”

“Is this a trick?” Thor asked, throaty, mind clouded, blood roaring in his ears. He still heard Loki’s voice as if it were the only sound in all the realms.

“You do know how I like my little tricks.”

If Thor leaned a little closer, he could have bitten those words from his tongue. Yet for all his berserker soul craved the tang of iron and salt, his heart twisted upon a different yearning, one both darker and brighter. The wish to claim his lips burned, but did not consume. In practice it ought to be no different from what they did now, no more damning or difficult. And yet it was, and he did not.

In the darkness Thor could see little of his younger brother. But he could trace the ridges of his skin with finger and tongue. Like a blind cartographer he followed their curves and their corners, seeking the limits of lands he might never now see for himself. Thor yearned for them all the same: imagining what they might have been, seeking the truth that lay behind them, feeling that which he would not be permitted to lay eyes upon. But then it didn’t matter. They were all Loki. And Loki was here with him now.

Heat rose like the flames of a bonfire, and despite the blue of his Jötunn skin Loki himself felt to be its source. The friction of their skin, blunted only slightly by the leaking of his cock, had his mouth opening on a moan. And yet for all the sensuality of it, a memory of Svartálfaheimr hit him hard in the gut: Loki’s mouth rounded about a half-voiced scream, arms stretched out, the universe torn open behind him as it sought to drag him in.

Thor’s arms tightened about the body undulating against his own. The remembrance of it came too easy, too true: he had bruised hard from the force of their collision when he had taken Loki about the middle, dragging him from the maws of death, catching him from a fall upward rather than downward, but one with an outcome as potentially fatal. Burying his face in Loki’s neck, Thor closed his mouth over the rapid pulse there, tongue pressed hard against the proof of life and living.

And when Loki tried to jerk his head back, even as his hips pressed their cocks tighter between the slide of abdomen and groin, Thor caught him about the neck so their foreheads met again. “You felt so cold,” he breathed, ragged, fierce, and Loki stilled.

“Oh?”

“When you died.” His other hand had closed over Loki’s ass, and he knew his fingers would leave bruises as he bucked in the relentless grip. “When I left you behind.”

“Is this really the time, Thor?” he asked, almost conversational save for the odd cadence of the sentence; he breathed just as hard as his brother. But then Thor had his face caught between both hands. He could almost have seen the silver-laced storm of his own eyes reflected in Loki’s, had he cared enough to look.

“I will not make the same mistake twice.”

Even in the face of such oath, Loki laughed outright, ground their hips together. “But you already have.”

“I know what I said.” His nails were digging into the soft flesh of his neck; if he yanked them down, he would leave new scars, twisting over and about the Jötunn lines. His smile bared bright teeth. “And I know what I am doing.”

“And they call _me_ the liar.”

Thor said nothing, only leaned down. The lips beneath him were wide with his smile, opening to loose laughter like storm. The need to take them with his own, to swallow alive that damnable sound, was strong enough to damn them both.

Behind them the window blew open. The shriek of two ravens rocked him upward, Loki’s fingernails gouging deep across his skin as he whipped around. Everything had turned very cold beneath the beady knowing eyes. Thor would recognise the watchful gaze of Muninn and Huginn anywhere. But then he saw who they preceded and it didn’t matter at all what they might convey to their master.

Standing at the end of their bed was Odin.


	13. 3.1: Aqua Regia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Um. Er. It's...been a while? And for that, I am sorry. Truth be told, I was pretty damn sure up until about a week ago that this story would never ever be finished. That was for a variety of reasons, but in the end there are some kind and wonderful and talented folk on tumblr who reminded me that a) I do love to write, b) that there are still a few people out there who will read it, and c) that they are kind and wonderful and talented and so here I am again.
> 
> There are disclaimers, though. The good news is, the story has very good chances of being completed: I've got the bare bones structure of every chapter save the epilogue, which is actually the hardest part. I also have the crazy urge to finish it. The bad news is, I can't really say much for the quality or consistency of it given the time between when I started the fic and now. I hope you still find something in it to enjoy.
> 
> I did start this story last November or thereabouts, long before _Guardians of the Galaxy_ was released. It exists now, though, and there's some influence of that story on this one, though in the end I'm doing what I like with the infinity stones and no mistake. This chapter also marks the beginning of Loki's POV, and I am...still easing myself into it. This is a bit of an introductory chapter, and I may come back and hack at it anyway. I had planned to write out more before I got to posting anything, but it was then pointed out to me that feedback is my literal feed while I am writing, so I'm going to surrender and post this first chapter and then just let it roll on from there. I cannot guarantee a posting schedule at this stage, but here's hoping for a once-weekly thing until we're all done.
> 
> Thank you so much for following the story along this far. I wouldn't have made it -- either in words, or in actual literal breathing life -- if not for the reminder that I have words, and sometimes people care enough to listen to the way I use them. It means a lot. I hope the story still has something left to tell, too. <3

“Father.” The fool already stood between them. With arms out straight, even, as if his brother were but some maiden he must protect. Irritation twisted in his gut like fresh-swallowed poison, but Loki smiled. There was no need to rise to this. Instead he indulged in a languid stretch, self-satisfied cat bathing in the richness of its stolen cream.

For his own part, Odin gave only silence in return. Looking straight past Thor, he kept one eye instead upon the son who was not his son. Even as Loki tilted his chin, schooled his smirk into something stronger and more uncaring yet, he noted Odin had chosen something other than his usual ceremonial garb: a Midgardian suit. More strangely there was no sign of tiredness about his ageing form, or at least not that which was physical. Still the weariness behind even the sharpness of his eye betrayed him. This was a king at the end of his reign.

Loki smiled all the wider. “Hello, Allfather.”

Though his eye did not leave Loki, it was not to him the order was directed. “Step aside, Thor.”

“No.” Naked as the day he was born – as the day he had been taken from Frigga’s body and laid into his father’s arms – Thor gave nothing away. Loki only just managed to hold back his laughter as Thor went: “You will not harm him.”

Odin’s head tilted with a half-caring curiosity. “Have I given you reason to believe that violence is my intention?”

“No.” The muscles in those outstretched arms bunched a moment, the bulk of biceps more startling than even the usual. Loki only wanted to run his tongue along the hollow beneath, yet Thor never did not know when to let go. His voice remained very hard when he spoke again. “But you and Loki have not been on the best of terms.”

“You find such unwarranted?”

“No,” he said again, and something in his voice spoke of growing irritation at Odin’s carelessly even tone, the raised eyebrow they’d seen so often when being lectured as children. And so Thor set his feet more evenly, thinned his lips. “But he _is_ my brother.”

“So I see, given the way you choose to behave behind closed doors.”

The bright flush of colour came over him like a tide too high to be natural, tangling his tongue in its wake. Yet Thor had little chance to respond either way; the Allfather’s raised hand forbade any further comment from his eldest. The other tightened upon the walking-stick at his side, and Loki only just repressed a shudder at the familiar pulse of withheld power he felt dancing upon the air.

“But that is not what I wish to discuss at this time.” Again that eye moved to him, pitiless and smooth. “Loki and I must speak. Privately.”

“ _No_.”

“It is not a request.”

“And thus I do treat it as one. I come only because it pleases me to do so.” Rising from the bed, Loki allowed the coverings to slither completely away. Some part of him cringed away at the idea of the Allfather seeing him this, every inch of his Jötunn skin upon crude display. He buried that shame instead under the mockery of the scene before this old king: his golden son, perfect and pure, caught in an act so close to incest with a creature foul and foolish both.

Thor’s hand closed about one elbow. Without a word Loki yanked it free. When it came again, the fingers closed down hard enough to bruise. Turning on him, the words were hissed and harsh. “ _Peace_ , you fool.”

Something like hurt flared in those silver-streaked eyes, but Thor masked it with admirable speed. Something twisted in his stomach as the remembrance of how he’d learned such trickery, but Loki only smiled even as Thor made his final stand.

“ _Loki_.”

He offered but one word. It still had power enough to make Loki waver, just a moment. Then he rolled his eyes, placed his feet evenly open the floor. “Dress, Thor. Then let me go. I am sure the Allfather will wish to speak with you too, in due course.”

“I will not leave you alone with him.”

The laughter was both incredulous and cruel. “Given your recent experiences, Thor, one might believe it more expedient not to leave _him_ alone with _me_.” The confusion on his brother’s face then was both a glorious and an irritating thing; having elaborate plans was never so fun when the fools within them did not see their cleverness. “But no matter how you might have it otherwise, it cannot be. I am going, and I will go alone.”

He started, a moment later: Thor had laid both bands upon his face, leaving Loki quite unable to look away. The nearness of his was palpable; they could have pressed one forehead to the other and still moved closer yet.

But they did not. Thor held them still, and despite the presence of their father he remained gloriously nude. The strangeness of it shivered beneath Loki’s skin. Such utter lack of shame should have been too much even for the Thunderer of Asgard. But then Thor spoke and nothing else mattered: his voice a discharge of potential energy, so loud as to drown out every other sound.

“If you have need, then call for me.” Urgency lit blue eyes with silver, the wide pupils an open invitation to fall. “And I will come for you. I will always come for you.”

“You have not yet come for me tonight.” His wicked grin, it seemed, was not enough to cover his own crawling skin at doing this in front of Odin; with that eye upon him now, Loki himself felt the very first beginnings of an unwelcome flush. “But no fear, I intend for us to have all the time we wish later.” With casual insolent grace, he turned finally to the old god-king. “Shall we then?”

Odin’s lips merely thinned, but no words passed between them. Despite his own manic grin, disappointment coiled about his heart, as it always had. Loki turned away to reach for his clothing. Though the weather beyond the mortal dwelling would be chill by their standards, Loki could not be much concerned by such temperature. So easily he slipped into leather trousers, a light shirt; then a gambeson shrugged on over them both. The only reason he took his time about it was that he could sense Thor’s eyes always upon him.

Only when his boots were laced did he straighten, turn to his brother. The room was really too small with three such as themselves contained within it, but Thor still seemed too far away when Loki crossed to stand before him. One raised hand came to rest upon his cheek, beard a soft rasp beneath his palm. Thor had dressed himself in undershirt and trousers, but there remained a rawness about him that left him as naked as the expression in his eyes.

“Goodbye, brother.”

Thor’s throat worked, too quick for the words that resonated harsh within. “Should you need me…”

“I always need you.”

The urge hit him hard and low in the gut, a sucker punch that left him breathless: He wanted to lean forward, to capture those generous lips with his own. But they had already turned down in an unhappy curve. So Loki only nodded. Even if it might disturb the Allfather, Loki could not bear the thought of witness to something so terribly private.

When he turned from Thor it was to confront to the casual majesty of Odin Allfather. “Shall we, then?”

One gnarled hand extended to him in invitation. The moment of pause dangled like a hanged man, twisting and uncertain in the unknown breeze. Loki had not touched his erstwhile father since he had slept in golden repose in the great chamber. He could not repress a full body shudder at the thought, and yet he smiled as he reached forward across what felt a chasm between them. A moment later his Jötunn hand closed tight over Odin’s forearm.

“So we go,” he murmured, and the world _shifted_.

The strength of the Allfather’s seiðr moved through him as an alien current, sparking along nerve and singing through blood. It had been something longed for as a child; it was no lie to call it unwanted now. Instead all he could think was how fierce was his desire for his own. There had been no falsehood in what he had told the Foster woman and Thor: if he wished to remain beneath the notice of Thanos, then he was obliged to leave his seiðr quiescent, silent, slumbering deep inside the monstrous form he wore now. Only without it, it was as if he had lost a limb, or a large chunk of his soul. His Jötunn form truly felt to be little more than the exoskeleton of a mindless beast.

The Allfather’s power, conducted through the medium of a simple cane that disguised the truth of Gungnir beneath, bore them swift away from the mortal woman’s home. Having little care for the place Loki could not be certain how far they moved, but they were within the city’s heart when the twist of space let them free again. He gave their surroundings but a cursory examination, found the Allfather had chosen a path alongside the river. In his experience this was not a city that ever slept easy, if at all, but they were accompanied by only the vague whisper of shadows as they began a meandering walk.

Loki let that susurrating silence sit between them, unwilling to be the first to speak. For all he had not wished to speak in front of Thor, he felt the lack of him now like an aching open wound. Instead he kept pace to his own beat, delighting in how his rhythm always clashed with that of the Allfather, dissonant and dithering.

At last the Allfather came to a stop. With only slight reluctance Loki came to stand at his side, leaving careful space between them. It could not match the size of the chasm rent between those who had once been father and son. Loki did not bother looking back, instead looking forward to see a great building that held none of the grandeur of Asgardian architecture. It could still be called remarkable enough for what the humans could hope to achieve with their little toys. Thor always had had a heart for simple things.

Loki dropped his eyes back to the water. It was but dirty little river, cutting its smug path through the filth of this mortal city. Yet the surface danced, broken and bleeding in gleeful light, beneath the gleam of the buildings built to the ends of its shores.

“This is a strange city indeed,” Odin said, his voice slow and dreaming. “There’s a beauty in her, yes, but the darkness which flows in her veins will drown her dead.”

Black-nailed fingers scratched along the stone before he turned to Odin with an impatient snort. “Might we dispense with the ponderous metaphors?” And he curled his smile around unspoken sins. “For I have other things I do wish to do this evening, even if you yourself have no better offers.”

The beating of dark wings preceded any answer he might have received; Loki started, shifted uncomfortably and utterly without intent. Muninn, the raven’s eyes very sharp and driving, had settled upon the stone wall between path and dark water. Despite Loki’s unintended and obvious reaction, Odin remained silent. But the watchful eyes of the raven disturbed him more than the singular of the king. He’d never been fond of the damn things, perhaps because when he’d been a child their sharp gaze had seemed more condemning than the dispassionate golden eyes of even Heimdall.

After a moment longer the raven rose; dark wings beat a mocking whisper upon the air as it crossed the river. Odin stirred himself too, though not to follow; it was as if the creature moved in advance of its masters will. Across the bridge the mortals paid them no heed to them at all. Loki would not have called it a kind of invisibility: instead it was as if they moved on a higher level, crossing the worlds above them all. That was just simply how it was for those of their kind, kings and monsters alike.

A great church rose before them, cloaked in partial darkness. The stone felt cold beneath his palm, strangely old for a world so young as all this. Still when they stepped through the great door and inside, Loki cast a look about, and expelled a scornful laugh into the echoing chambers of glass and granite.

“And now we come to the resting place of kings,” he said, as light in his mockery as he had been the day he took his trial’s condemnation. “How very morbid of you.”

The old man looked always ahead, but Loki could see where his knuckles had whitened upon the unbleached wood of his false cane. “This was not our bargain, Loki.”

“Was it not? I hadn’t noticed.”

Odin snorted, a light and surprisingly dignified sound. “I suppose I should have guessed at what you meant to do, when you took to Freyja’s palace,” he said, and did not bother to mask the sour note. “Much goes on within those floating halls that she does not wish others to see.”

“Yes, well perhaps she prefers not to have the gaze of old men upon her as she goes about her personal affairs.”

“Whereas apparently you do wish it.”

He should have expected as much; though Frigga had been quick with word and spell, Loki had not learned cruelty nor cynicism by her hand. In silence he trembled, found only steadiness when he opened his palm, laid it upon the forehead of but one of many effigies arrayed about them. This one was a sleeping king. He should have laughed. Instead he closed his eyes, wished he could calm the childish rabbit-beat of his aching heart.

“I do not do any of this for you.”

Odin provided no answer to that. Loki had not assumed there would be one. Somehow it still twisted about his heart as a garrotte. Raising his eyes to the high ceiling, ribbed like a hollow chest in wood and stone, he twisted his tongue, sought some insult.

But Odin made his first move.

“Thor must become king. You know this as well as I – and it is now the only reason I have not stripped you of all your magic and left what remains to blow away on the winter winds.”

Loki still lost his gaze in the rafters; if he looked hard enough he could catch the faint movement of wing and claw, the scrabble of young in the unseen nests of high places. “We are not discussing your love of me.”

“It is his love of you that is the problem.” And how Loki just wanted to bring his hands down upon the stone king before him, beating his fists until they bleed raw and ruined; he would have achieved the same by throwing himself at Odin’s feet. The old king only sighed, expelling disappointment and disgust alike. “So is this how you would have it be? If you cannot be king yourself, you will be the one in his deepest confidences and in his bed, dripping poison in his ear? Or is it that you seek his protection?”

His eyes burned, the unshed saltwater rendering his voice hoarse and harsh. “When you consider it, it _is_ a far better plan than the one you had.” Only his long fingers betrayed his rising panic, a blue tangle upon the stone. “Why should we be brothers, when I could have all along been his Jötunn whore?”

Odin’s single eye narrowed; in the shadow, in his dark suit, his face seemed to float there unaided, a condemning spirit called forth to send one to their final torment. “Do you believe this would have made you happier?”

“I cannot say I believe that was ever your concern.”

Whereas that one watchful eye remained upon him, the golden patch that covered the other winked even in the dim gloom of the chapel. Loki turned away, bile rising in his throat.

“I have not reneged on the conditions of our agreement,” he said. “My methods were under no constraint.”

“No. They were not.”

Even when not actively looking into it, Loki could never be quite sure what moved behind that singular eye. The one who was his biological father had taken the other from him. Loki had never wished so strongly that Laufey had blinded the man completely.

But when he spoke, he kept it light, easy. “But my methods aside, I do believe there is something that you owe me now.”

“Not yet.”

The flare of fury rose in him like exploding magma, though he tamped it down with light mockery. “Oh, and they call _me_ the liar!”

“I stated that I would return those items to you when it was appropriate. You have not yet located the other five infinity stones in full. Therefore Hela’s bowl and knife shall remain in my care.”

Tightened lips stretched almost to breaking around the glinting white of his bared teeth. “We are close.”

“Close, but not complete.”

Loki could not stop his palm from descending, slapping hard enough against the stone to sound as gunshot. Even as fierce sudden pain blossomed along every nerve of his lower arm, he glared only at Odin. “Is that not then why you came now? To give to me what is mine?”

His tone was too careless, too callous. “These items remain the property of Hela. They are merely on loan to you.”

When he glanced downward, he could see a crack splitting the face of the unknown king in twain. “I know the bargain I made with her.”

“Do you?”

“I have more right to them than you.”

“You abandoned them.”

“I left them in safekeeping!”

A faint smile emerged, as strange and certain as the first darling bud of spring. Loki wished only to reach forward with dark-nailed hands and claw the smugness from his face. “And yet how easily I took them from you,” Odin observed, and Loki barely kept his legs from collapsing from beneath him.

“How easily you took _everything_ from me.”

The raw hurt in those words left even Odin Borrson very quiet, and very still. Not even the faint sounds of humanity living their little lives could be of any relevance to what passed between higher beings such as they.

“I need her counsel,” Loki said at last, and Odin’s furrowed brow made him want to howl.

“Do you actually fool yourself with the belied that she would approve of the path you have chosen?”

Instead of screaming, he turned himself very cold, very still. At least his loathed heritage had its vague uses. “I believe such matters are between her and me.”

“She always did hold your ear more than I.”

_Because you never stopped long enough to listen, even when I still had the courage and hope to try!_ “Give me Sullt and Hungr,” he said instead, and Odin shook his head.

“No.”

“You cannot deny me her forever,” he said, hotly. “Or is your word really worth so little?”

“I have made my intentions clear, Loki. The matter is closed.”

“She was my mother!”

His roar should have torn the place all to the ground. “She was _my_ wife!” Loki reared back, eyes wide: and Odin only smiled, humourless in his fury. “And she will always be our queen.”

When he laughed, it was a wet and broken sound. “And yet you deny me the one thing I ask for. What she would have given me so easily, and without these games we play.”

“Do what you promised, Loki, and you shall have what we have agreed upon.”

End of the conversation though it might be, he felt it more in the nearing of fluttering wings, the rising caw like laughter. With hands fisted against his thighs, Loki choked upon his own chuckle, lip split by the pressure of sharpened teeth.

“Have I not done as I agreed?” he asked, and hated himself for the way he sought the Allfather’s approval even now. “Did you not sleep well?”

“Did you not enjoy your time upon the throne?”

The banality of it all made him want to scream. The sting of it did not help, turned as it was like a blade upon the one who had so recently wielded it. “Do you not find it not ironic, that the hated son, the regretted foundling, should be the only one willing to inherit all you left in the wake of your grief?”

A flinty look arrived in his one remaining eye. Odin had been half-blind, Loki thought dully, when he had taken his infant self from the ice.

“It was but your regency – and one not even in your own name.”

“A name that was never truly mine to begin with,” he countered, and waved one hand; the raised swirl and dip of the Jötunn lines there were just as smooth and elegant as the movement itself. “But your point is taken, Allfather. You have made your stance on my birthrights quite clear, no matter whose royal blood might run through these veins.”

Odin followed the movement with only vague interest; his disconnect from his second son however was no new feeling to Loki. “You were always jealous of his attentions.”

Loki snorted, though it hurt deeper than he wished to admit. “If it eases your mind, you may believe I do this to spite the mortal woman.” It felt much more comfortable to slide back into the shadows, to twist his expression into something cold and mocking. “She does have her use, to us.”

Odin remained unmoved. “She will play her role, as will we all.”

Loki closed his eyes, drew in a soundless breath. When no further words came, he provided his own, whisperlight and weary. “I asked you a question, once.” And he hated that he still so desperately needed to know. “You never answered it.”

The silence between them now echoed that which it had been once before: when Loki had stood before the Casket, and Odin unarmed at the head of the stairs. Now he had Gungnir, Odin’s weight leant upon the gnarled stick in his own weathered hand, and Loki had nothing at all. There was no sword, no shield, no seiðr for him now. But then all kings had wars to wage that did not take place upon battlefields such as those sung of in song by skald.

_You took me for a reason. What was it?_

“The Norns spin their threads,” Odin said finally, slowly, “and to each of us there is a pattern, the tapestry that will be the span of our lives.”

Loki smiled, brittle and unsurprised. “And so we dance to the tune of those who wrote the music long before we learned even to sing.”

The light painted Odin’s face in a chiaroscuro of golden light and ashy shadow; it made his smile something strange and nostalgic, as if he spoke to a child in his study in the hour after dinner, the air rich with the scent of incense and dried flower. “Ah, but perhaps you confuse predestination with free will.”

A low laugh covered how badly the invoked memory had struck him. “What free will can there be to have, in a world that demands we play the roles written for us by another’s hand?”

“The Norns do not make our choices on our behalf.” Now he sounded faintly surprised, a teacher only just learning themselves the tilt of their student’s mind. “They simply place them before us, and ask us which way we will go.”

Loki opened his arms wide, as if inviting another blow to the chest. “And so here we are.”

Odin did not move. “And here we are.”

Loki half turned, the memory of their original conversation still fresh in his mind. Spoken in a throne room, sliding from the borrowed form of a dead Einherjar, he had played what little of his hand remained to him. “Thor has strayed far from his own path,” he said, hollow. Odin inclined his head.

“And so we must shepherd him home.”

And Loki laughed, silent and sneering. “Take your throne now, old man, now that you can keep your eyes open long enough to do so.” Somewhere in the distance, he could hear low thunder. “You should treasure what time upon Hliðskjálf remains you.”

“All things must change.” The agreement held the heavy impression of losing time, and weary experience. “Remember your promise, Loki.”

“It is not the faults of my memory you need worry about, Allfather.”

“This is far greater than the grudges of a child.”

“How fortunate I am, then, to have your guidance in this,” he snapped, pressing back light-footed from the stone face of the dead king. “For this _is_ what you took me for, after all: a tool to shape your beloved infant son into the golden brilliance of the heir you desired!”

“There is little point in over-simplification, Loki.”

“But it is the _entire_ point! Because now that I know my place in the cosmos, I do it willingly. And isn’t that easier? To accept that any freedom I thought I had was but an illusion, and that my cage is far more than four walls and a pile of books brought as a sop to a madman?” He was speaking too fast and too hard now, saliva flying from his lips with every explosive syllable. “I’ve been your possession from the day you picked me up from that cold slab of an altar. So do you not talk to me of generosity or salvation. You slaved me to your son. Let me take what pleasure in that I can.”

Odin turned, his good eye doused in shadow. “If you cannot defeat Thanos, then he is welcome to you and your delusions.”

“Are you not at all afraid I’ll just whore my talents out to him again?”

“I believe he’s had about all he can take of your lies.” The cane shifted from one hand to the other, the wood seeming to pulse with the vast power contained within. “There are few of us with so much stomach for them.”

“You just hate that your son is one of them,” Loki spat back. “That your wife was too.”

“No.” His eye shone in the darkness, blue and very cold. “What I hate is that my youngest son fell for Loki’s lies more often than anyone else.”

He wanted to laugh, loud and long, but the sound crackled like static electricity in his throat. “Go back to your golden throne. Watch others save the realms you once swore to protect.” The hoarseness of every word rendered everything raw and bleeding. “It is all you are good for now, old king.”

“Whatever else you believe, I did take you for a reason, Loki.”

“I know that,” and his face ached with the falsity of his laughing grin. “But I begin to believe you yourself had no clue as to that reason.”

“You always were best at fooling yourself.” The cane tilted to him, something like a dismissal, something like a final warning. “Good eve to you, my son.”

Loki watched him go, mouth twisted about an ugly denial. Then he simply turned his back so he might return to familiar shadow. It seemed easier to descend into its gloomy depths now, knowing what light awaited him at its end.

 

*****

 

He’d expected to find Thor pacing the floor, Mjölnir in hand, temper sparking from both his eyes and the damnable weapon itself. Having been in his company enough times when he had been forced to wait for something, Loki was well acquainted with his elder brother’s lack of sustained patience. But instead Loki found him seated, great hands wrapped about a small cup that all but disappeared into his grip. Frowning, Loki delicately pushed the door shut with one foot, and shook his head.

“Honestly, Thor, you act as though the mortal’s precious coffee bean could outstrip the finest teas of Vanaheimr and Asgard combined.” Shaking out his hair, he then brushed at a sleeve; he could still feel the Allfather’s seiðr lingering there, unwelcome and tenacious. “I always knew you for a fool, but this is simple heresy.”

The cup rolled across the carpet, spraying the foul liquid as it went; Thor paid it not a whit of heed, striding across the room with the force of oncoming storm. Loki made an undignified squeak right before Thor engulfed him in an embrace that knocked all breath from him. Irritation flared, dictated that he should have shoved him back. Instead Loki brought his arms up and pressed hard and fierce against the bodily tempest which had taken him up. The eyes of the mortals on them were a kind of victory; Thor’s woman was not present, though it did not matter. She would be told. This was a victory he might revel in, but only a moment. Then he enjoyed it only for himself.

“I…that’s really bad for the carpet, bud. And I think you’re breaking his ribs.”

The mortal child’s voice rolled from his back like water from a duck’s oiled feathers; not even Loki himself could have made Thor let go in this moment. Loki dug his fingers in deep all the same, working nails beneath skin until Thor drew back with a hiss. The half-hearted glare vanished with Loki’s wan smile.

“The Allfather wishes to speak with you.”

The raven who had accompanied him back gave a croak, all mocking demand. Thor’s eyes shifted, his jaw tightening. With a light laugh, Loki raised a hand, pressed the knuckles gently beneath one high cheekbone. Startled, Thor looked down.

“Do not keep him waiting,” Loki advised, light as ice, and Thor’s expression grew tauter still.

“What did he say to you?”

“What was necessary.” This time Loki did extract himself from his brother’s grip, and dipped a servant’s inviting bow towards the door. “ _Go_.”

A burgeoning frown etched itself only deeper. The restless fingers of his right hand curled inwards to a fist, but he did not call Mjölnir. Instead he raised his head high, nodded. “I remember where I am needed.”

“Yes, yes,” Loki replied, flapping a hand as he might when dismissing some serving wench. “Thick as your skull is, you’re as tenacious as a hunting hound with a kitchen bone. I know you will be back.” This smile was the kind that came from stories of draugar and the true dead. “I also know you would never leave me alone with your mortal beloved.”

“ _Loki_.”

The smile was broad and flat. “Go.”

Somewhat to his surprise, Thor did. From his own expression he’d surprised even himself. It was of some comfort to Loki; there had been too much time apart, in the end. The truth of it curved around his heart like rose vines of thorns and not a single bud: Loki had left, and Thor had changed. Much as Loki did not want returned the lie of his life before, anything else forced him to realise that his brother had grown and changed and _learned_ and Loki himself had not been there to see it.

In the silence, a throat cleared. Loki’s hand twitched. He was never entirely unarmed.

“So that guy’s your _dad_.”

That was the girl: dark of hair and generous of bosom at first glance, her most memorable features had long since proved to be the quick mind and the swifter tongue that so often preceded it.

“He is not my father.”

She pursed her lips outward in thought, then raised her cup to them. “Yeah, but he raised you like one, right?”

He had no real reason to speak with such a low creature, and yet the words spilled out quite of their own accord. “That depends entirely upon one’s definition of father.”

“Well, mine might not be the best considering the sperm donor who made me ditched my teen mom and ran off to marry the pastor’s daughter like he was supposed to and wouldn’t pay child support even after the DNA tests came back, so you know. I leave that whole definition thing to people who actually had one.”

The mortal boy sat very still at her side as she downed the last of whatever swill beverage she’d chosen. Choosing a chair across from them both, Loki sank into it, let his knees play wide as he raised a careless eyebrow. “Do you expect sympathy for your little mortal sob story?”

“Well, your god one’s not working for me, so I guess that’s fair play. As they say around here.” The cup set down upon the low table between them with a startling _clack_ ; Loki half expected to see a stellate bloom of cracks appear in the glass beneath it. “So, is he bollocking you guys for staying out past curfew or something?”

Neither concept quite translated in the Alltongue, and his damnable curiosity wouldn’t let the first slide. “ _Bollocking_?”

“Another thing we say round here.” That had been volunteered by the boy rather than the girl, and when Loki gave him an irritated look it was to find him raising a metal vessel in one hand, a fresh mug in the other. “More tea?”

What he offered could be named little more than swill, but it would serve its purpose. Still the warmth of it held between his palms only served to reveal to him how very cold his hands were. While they gathered no heat from the oddly-patterned mug, neither did they tremble. That seemed all the more important.

The girl had her own metal vessel of a stronger-scented liquid; she filled her own mug and then curled her legs beneath her. Her eyes fixed hard upon him, jaw set very strangely. The strength of will in her was entirely dissimilar to that of Thor’s particular mortal, but perhaps they were equals in depth. Loki simply found himself more curious about the boy at her side. He was the type of low creature who might be easily overlooked, but already Loki had found matters of in the mind behind the stuttering voice.

Yet he did not seem interested in talk. With his mug held grimly in hand, he sat very very close to the girl’s side; something in the quiet tilt towards her dug sharp little knives into Loki’s heart. It could almost be like looking into a mirror, one left grainy and cracked by time and separation. It was easier indeed to follow the direction of his gaze instead.

The raven had not accompanied Thor back to Odin. It remained instead upon the open windowsill, head held low and wings always just always upon the verge of opening to flight. The dark little eyes were entirely too watchful. It didn’t surprise him that even the mortals could see that there was nothing ordinary in the tilt of its head, the penetrating darkness of the reflective gaze. Yet it didn’t give them brazenness enough to stand up and shoo the damned thing out of their home.

Loki turned from the raven to the boy. A second after he did so the boy glanced up, their eyes meeting; he started as if stabbed in the gut with an Einherjar’s charged sword. It made Loki think of days long past, when they had been taken into the forest as children with the simplest of hand-made weapons, searching for small game. He’d taken down his first rabbit with a ballista made of stones, sticks, and flax-twine. It had worn the same expression in the moments before it died.

The girl made a low sound in her throat not unlike a growl. Yet no words emerged from her mouth for he spoke first, licking his lips where the action had left them dry.

“What’s his name?”

Loki raised first his eyebrow, then his mug. He had to tell himself it was boredom that had him replying, not the prickling uncomfortableness of waiting for brother and father to have their moment. But then he’d known from that terrible first moment he’d laid hands upon the Casket of Ancient Winters that he would never trust the Allfather with the pure simplistic love of a child ever again.

“Muninn.”

Though he’d given an answer brusquely short, the boy’s brow furrowed. “Where’s Huginn?”

“With the Allfather and my brother, I would presume.”

“Wait, they have names?” The girl turned to the boy, disbelieving as any child confronted with the monster under the bed. “And you _know_ them?”

He gave a little sigh, and though he pressed his cup to his lips he did not drink. “In Norse legends, Odin Allfather had two ravens who would gather information from Midgard for him. Huginn and Muninn.”

“Oh, right. Messenger pigeons for the gods, I get it. Suppose it figures that that kind of shit is real.” Then she sat up too straight, abrupt enough to slosh thick dark liquid onto the wools wrapped about her body. “Wait, what kind of information’s he getting right now?”

The boy just blinked at her as if she were mad. “Why would they not be real?”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right. I mean, we’ve got aliens and gods and alcoholics functional enough to break up terrorist cells in between throwing the most kick ass parties post-Gatsby era; what’s a few peeping tom ravens on top of all that?”

The faint beginnings of a headache were now throbbing deep behind his left temple. “You do not have to wait here for Thor to return. I am content enough to wait alone.”

“Nah, we do. He might need some tea. And I bet you have no idea how the kettle works.”

“The kettle’s always on. There’s really not much to it.”

The look this earned the boy from the girl could have melted the face off any one of Asgard’s ostentatious golden statues. “It’s just good manners.” Then Loki got a faceful of the same look himself. “Though you’re not so big on those, I figure.”

“Your own behaviour would hardly grace the hallowed halls of god-kings, I can assure you.”

“But I’m just a scrubby little human, what would I know?” Despite her obvious temper, something in her softened when she looked again to the boy sat too close to her side. “Although Ian’s cool. I think Ian would get by okay.”

He winced, seemed to curl around his nearly empty mug. “Please don’t send me to the hall of the god-king, Darcy.”

The indulgent grin she gave him would have terrified some of the most seasoned Einherjar Loki had known. Then she started, apparently of her own accord. “Oh, actually, that _reminds_ me,” she said, and turned to him with eyes blazing. “R’lyeh.”

“Excuse me?”

“ _R’lyeh_. You ever been there?” The incredulous tone of his eyes had no impact on her; instead she just pouted, folded one hand around her waist in childish disgust. “Hey, you were the one talking about the halls of the gods.”

Loki raised his mug, looked disdainfully at its porcelain bottom. “I require more tea.”

The well of the metal vessel had apparently run dry. With a mumbled apology the boy climbed first to his feet, and then disappeared into the kitchen. Though it was hardly a distance to retreat, he seemed quite happy with the escape. The girl remained, glasses now askew on her scrunched up nose, eyes very blue.

“Am I supposed to be scared of you?”

He snorted, put the mug aside. “I do not seek to control the thoughts of lesser creatures.”

“Charming. And history says otherwise.” Though her voice did not waver in strength, her body curved tighter in upon itself when next she spoke. “Why’d you blow up Midtown?”

He blinked. “I had no idea that was what it was called.”

A scowl. “ _So_ charming,” she muttered, and kicked the arm of the chair. “They’re still rebuilding Main Street, you know. Back in New Mexico. Izzy’s will never be the same.”

“This all means what to me, precisely?”

Even that casual cruelty did not faze her. Instead her anger sharpened, eyes darkening to something closer to twilight. “So does the universe revolve around Asgard, or is it just you at the middle?”

“Do the ants concern themselves with the stars?”

“Well, if it’s the sky that the rocks fall from, I guess they’d have to.”

Both of them looked up, neither quick enough for a reply to that. The boy just gave a little shrug, as if he’d but accidentally spoken aloud, and raised a fresh pot of tea like a flag of surrender. When no-one said a word he poured out two fresh cups for himself and for Loki. It was done with a surprising grace, considering his gangling body seemed to have little innate ability to operate much beyond its most basic functional parameters.

“It’s an unkindness.”

The sudden words sat ill at ease with the way his eyes focused still on his steady hands. Loki still fixed his own upon the boy, not sure whether to laugh or to scoff. “Excuse me?”

With the pot set safely aside the boy looked up, pulled a hand back through the droop of his hair. “Collective noun. For a group of ravens.”

His gaze narrowed. “There is only one.”

“But those ones come in pairs. Memory and thought.” For the first time in the strangeness of this conversation he’d initiated, the boy looked unsettled. “They…they don’t have to be unkind.”

Loki snorted. “While there are some who believe that the truest wisdom comes from the simplest of creatures, I have never given such any credence.”

The smile was as mild and bland as the décor which surrounded it. “Oh, so that’s why you listened to me and all.” Again he raised the pot. “More tea?”

There came the urge to take it, if only to indulge the urge to throw it. Yet the aim would not be at his head, or even at the wall. Loki rather yearned to throw something clean through it. Few understood the simplest truth of why there was such beauty in destruction: because if he made a hole in something, it might compete – if only for a moment! – with the emptiness inside himself.

Then something crackled in Darcy’s hands, and Loki scowled.

“What is that toy?”

She flipped the device between her fingers with a startling and unexpected skill, and then shrugged. “It’s not Mew-Mew, sure.” The glint in her eyes darkened. “But it still packs a punch.”

Much as he did have to admire those who had every intention of fighting back rather than just lying down and receiving their ending, he still pitied her fool heart. “If I had meant you any harm, you would not have lived long enough to know of it.”

Now she tossed the little device from one hand to the next. “I know you probably get this a lot, but with your people skills…yeah, it’s no wonder your brother’s a bit more popular than you.”

The couch accepted his graceful lean backward, though it hardly could hope to give the effect a throne might. “The Norns do so love to remind us of the places they make for us.”

That stopped the movement dead. “What, this is all just _fate_ , now?” Leaning forward, feet flat upon the ground, Darcy’s eyes narrowed to slits. Loki sensed no anger in her now, rather just a curious kind of affront. “I mean, come on, but I’d figure an agent of chaos to kinda spit in the face of predestination, you know?”

“Even that is a role to play, Darcy.” Ian got two glares for his trouble, but was too busy stirring his tea to acknowledge either. “The trickster is as much an archetype as the hero.”

“And is this all but a tale told by a bard?” Loki asked. “Do you expect that you are owed a happy ending just because you align yourself with the light?” And now the words came too thick and fast and yet he could not stop them, a child taught the ways of life so cruelly he could not help but rage against it. “I do hate to be the bearer of bitter tidings, but those who act in support such as yourselves often end up being sacrificed for the betterment of the heroes.” The laugh sounded like the last strangled sound of a man dangling upon his gibbet. “They learn from their mistakes best when they kill others. It is simply how it is.”

“Yeah, well, the ones looking for redemption usually get it through dying,” Darcy remarked, cool and calm. “But then that’s pretty damn cheap when it comes to you.”

Loki did not even realise he had stood, hands clenched. But she showed no fear, stared up at him. Muninn croaked, and the sound was so close to laughter Loki felt as though his head might explode.

And beneath him, Ian raised another mug, the liquid within milkless and darkly hot. “Tea?”

His laughter now was broken, disbelieving. “You are a foolish child.”

He shrugged, but still held the fresh cup out. “My mum would agree with you on that one,” he said, and something in that self-conscious, lopsided grin reminded him terribly of Thor himself even as he went on. “She says she doesn’t care how many times I’ve paid my council tax, I’m still about as adult as a kid trying to buy booze down the off-license with their cousin’s driver’s license.” Now his other hand extended: cradled in the palm was a small ceramic pot, filled with coarse white grain. “Sugar?”

He did not take either. “I would prefer silence.”

They offered it freely enough, strange as it was. In its place they were given instead the rumble of brontide, distant and troubled. The girl, Darcy, now jitterbugged her fingers constantly over the screen of her primitive communications device. Her partner, on the other hand, remained thoroughly quiet. Loki soon wished he hadn’t asked him to. The way he contemplated his tea reminded him of how his own mother had stirred the leaves of her own careful brews, searching in the chaotic movement for the truest lines of impending reality.

Thor’s return, when it inevitably came, was almost a non-climatic event. He brought with him no sign of the favoured mortal. He also showed no clear emotion besides an awkward kind of exhaustion: not strong enough to slow him to a stop, but enough to leave him almost clumsy as he threw himself down beside Loki. The boy, Ian, slipped away with his empty pot. Only as he passed the sliding door to the balcony did Loki realise that Muninn had gone. He ought to have been glad. Somehow, though, it just made him angry.

“Pleasant father-son reunion, was it?”

Thor blinked, looked up. The sharp tone seemed to slap some life back into him, his eyes darkening. “Father spoke of his support of our plan.” Every word was clipped, a soldier’s quick analysis and demand. “So what must our next step be, if we are to begin to bring the stones together?”

Loki pursed his lips. The irritation that had flared so bright defied easy classification; it was hard to say if it was the thought of Thor with Odin, or just the fact he was in no mood to do anything now. “We will need Jane Foster to isolate the Vanadís, or at least stabilise it long enough for it to be of any use,” he said, and then frowned. “We will also need to retrieve the infinity gauntlet from the vault.” This time he managed a smile, one sharp enough to slit throats upon. “I do not believe the Allfather will object.”

“He will not.”

The flat agreement of that made Loki wish to put a dagger through the nearest available neck. “Oh, given you free reign this time, has he?” he sneered. “Heimdall _will_ be pleased. At least aiding you in this latest plot will not strike him thrice in treason against his king.”

“I am certain Heimdall will provide aid where it is necessary, should we ask.” And then he turned, abrupt in his exit from their troubled conversation. “Darcy, shall I charge that for you?”

“I – what?”

She sat there still with that fool device between her hands, looking rather like a child caught with her fingers in a fresh-baked pie. Thor’s own smile grew broad, and Loki longed to slap it off his face almost as much as he wished to press his own against it and drown himself in its perfect warmth.

But Thor had eyes only for the mortal girl. “It is effective enough,” he said, one hand extended, “but if you wish for some guarantee of protection from Loki then might I suggest I…enhance it, for you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Thor ignored him. There came an expected flash of temper, and yet what followed on its heels was something worse entirely: nostalgia. This was but the memory of a thousand years. Even as he half drowned within it, Darcy was handing Thor the little black device, expression indicating how rightfully sceptical she was.

“You really going to help me beat up your little bro?”

“I am his older brother. It has been my job for many a century.” The easy camaraderie of his voice turned stern. “And you may only do so if it becomes necessary.”

“If he’s asking for it, you mean.”

Indignant as his inner voice might be, Loki only bothered with a rending glare. Thor still bent thoughtful to his task, and curious as his rare workings of elemental seiðr always made him, Loki’s eyes still slipped momentarily sideways. There he could see the quiet shadow of the boy in the distance, watching as Thor cradled it in his palm.

Returning his own attention to it, Loki noted that it was woefully small by comparison to both hammer and the one who wielded it. But Thor was infinite gentleness where he raised first one, then the other. Where they pressed together there came the soft crackle of light over the runed head, the scent of burning ozone like storm upon his lips. It calmed when they were parted, and Thor returned the mortal device. Though she accepted it back like it had grown teeth, within moments she was again tossing it from hand to hand. The discharge of electricity buzzed upon the air even without direct contact, and she laughed loud and delighted.

“That’s pretty cool.”

“It is a great honour,” Thor said with grave dignity. Loki barked a laugh, just barely bit back the urge to kick his stupid oaf of a brother right in his unguarded shins.

“Thor, do not.” At the enquiring look, he rolled his eyes. “Do _not_ play the benevolent god, gifting mortals with slivers of your divine soul. It does not suit you.”

“Like hell it doesn’t.” Darcy’s eyes shone like Thor had just casually hung the sun and stars. “Hell, if I didn’t already have an Ian and Jane hadn’t already staked her claim, I’d be all over worshipping you like fangirl devotee.”

The sharp stab of jealousy was strong enough that it might only be satisfied by the sinking of clawed fingers into skin, dragging him away from this low place. But Loki only smirked, even as his nails dug crescent wounds into blue palm.

“If you have given the girl her false comfort, then, perhaps we might retire? Speak alone of matters only for divine ears?”

Darcy raised the device, its crackle cheerful and sharp. “Got my eye on you, buddy.”

From Ian there was no spoken goodbye. Instead he extended two mugs again. Thor took them both, and only when Loki had closed the balcony door and left them alone in the night did he frown into their depths.

“He is very…reliant, on this beverage.”

Loki picked up one mug, drank it down in one burning swallow. The warmth of it hit him like passed summer afternoons, the clatter of a loom’s shuttle overhead. When he set it aside, it was with but the faintest longing. They could share sorrows later.

“We will return to Asgard – I am certain your mortal can work on the Vanadís from there. As for Iðunn, you and I shall go to the orchard—”

“Loki.”

“Yes?”

For a moment Thor fiddled with the mug between his hands, not drinking. Then he set it aside, still unable to look up. “We should…speak. Of it.”

The clenching in his cold gut, by turns both burning and deep frost, had no similarity to the light mockery of his crooked smile. “Oh, of what the Allfather said?”

“No.” His expression was both awkward and defiant now. “Of what Father saw.”

He could find shame in the memory, Loki knew. He fought for delight instead. “Oh, you needn’t worry about it. He made his opinion on the matter quite clear.”

“But what of _my_ opinion?” His shoulders hunched forward, voice lowering. “And what of yours?”

He laughed, and not unkindly. “Let’s not play games with each other here, Thor,” he said, and the lies slid free as if greased for such a pathway. “We both found it amusing enough while it lasted, but now that he knows it might as well be left to the uncomfortable past.”

“I…what?”

With his mouth hanging open that way, Thor looked more a fool now than he had in years. “Familial weakness. Don’t you remember?” Even as his heart frosted over, still beating in painful rhythm even as he tried to force it to stop, Loki smiled, patted his brother upon one arm like an indulgent uncle. “It’s in your blood, to want what I have between my legs. It’s just a craving. We sated it, or at least we tried. But you and I, we will never make one another happy.” And he leaned back at the exact moment Thor reached out blindly to take his wrist. “I suggest you let it go.”

“Loki—”

And now the bitterness slipped free, a broken dam. “Thor, this form is a curse. I am a monster. It seduces even the one who calls himself my brother!”

It was too much – more than he had ever intended to give. But Thor had not turned away. Instead he sat there still. The curve of his bowed head hid his face from Loki, motionless beneath the fall of shadow-darkened hair over his shoulder.

“I do not see it that way,” he said, slow, and Loki snorted.

“You and I, we have ever seen things rather differently.”

The sharp strike of his upward glance hit him as hard as any blow from Mjölnir. “Which is why we have been brought together,” Thor said, and then he was upon his feet, hands on Loki’s shoulders, holding him still. And still Loki smiled, all easy mockery and desperate despair.

“By the king of Asgard’s whim?”

“By the Norns,” Thor sighed, and leaned forward so that their foreheads pressed together. “You said yourself that you would never be free of me,” he whispered, eyes searching. “It would then follow but only logically that I shall never be free of you.”

“I never come easily to heel.”

“No.” Their lips were close together. Too close. Loki did not move back, merely accepting Thor’s words as the very air he breathed. “I have made it very clear to Father that I will do as I please in this matter,” Thor whispered, and Loki’s chuckle was despair and desperate hope.

“How very noble of you.”

“I would actually assume it was somewhat selfish, but as you will.” He stepped back now, passed a hand over his tired features. “With that said I believe he still hopes that one day he will to awaken and discover that I have taken Sif to wife and already produced a bushel of babes.”

Loki backed away with a smile, felt the balcony’s edge stop him from falling. His fingers dug deep enough into the stone that it should have bruised, inert mineral or no. “He still presses that suit upon you?”

“I believe he has even spoken to Sif upon the matter.” Even as Loki’s shoulders stiffened, Thor only sighed. “But then, Mother never did the same.”

Any words in his mind evaporated. Instead his fingers twisted too tightly about each other, the creak of hidden bone beneath the flow of aching blood. Loki had not needed the reminder that it had never been shared with the man he’d named _brother_ his entire cursed life.

And again Thor sighed. “I do not mean to hurt you.”

“But it just happens?” Loki gave his brother a half-smile, under lowered eyelashes; the unspoken violence was tangible. “I shan’t complain. I always did love the inevitability of chaos.”

“Entropy.” He spoke with a lopsided grin that faded scarcely a second after the word did. Instead he turned a yearning look to the sky, which had the faintest hint of ionisation; a lurking barely-seen colour, lending a magnetism to the air that made him think of the aurora over Glaðsheimr.

Loki looked away. When Thor spoke again it was the light and wondering whisper of uncertain nostalgia, when one could not be certain the memories were worth such fond preservation.

“We did try. Sif and I. Once, twice, several times.”

Attempting to swallow past the harsh lump in his throat almost had him choking on it. “Did you.”

“It was only ever fooling about.” Something strange and resigned coloured his words; Loki glanced over, saw his brother’s face in peculiar profile. Uncertainty had never suited those broad features. “But even then she was not inclined. She said no other soldier of the Einherjar was going down on his knees for any man, so why should she?” His lips curled up in rueful smile when he looked over to Loki now. “With that said, in the end she concluded I was no man, but a prince indeed.”

Loki’s eyes narrowed. “Does this mean that you’ve had entire squadrons with their lips about your cock?” Light and playful as he let the words be, his temper always walked a thin red line. “Perhaps I am not so certain I wish to join such unexceptional ranks.”

That tiredness of before entered his eyes again. “Loki.” Stepping closer, Thor apparently realised he should not touch him now; the great hands remained at his sides. “Sif and I, we have never been more than friends.”

The stone of the balcony’s balustrade felt cold where it dug into the small of his back. “What difference should this make to me?”

Now one hand rose, falling before it could rest in that place between collarbone and the pulse of heart in his throat. His eyes were very dark with the lack of moon. “You don’t need to pretend,” Thor said, soft, and Loki just snorted.

“Pretend at what?”

Thor did not bother with an answer this time. Instead he shook his head, eyes moving towards the sliding glass door that would provide him exit.

“We have been brothers ever since I can remember.” Their eyes met, and his had become something very quiet and soft. “I may not know everything, Loki. But I know enough.”

“Arrogance does not become you.”

“Oh yes it does.” This grin arrived sunlight cutting through the clouds. “But you can argue the point later. I am going to bed.”

It was an unspoken invitation. Loki did not take it. As he moved instead to stand alone upon the balcony, he could not say whom he sought to deny it from: his brother, or himself.

 

*****

 

“Can I talk to you?”

If he’d had his seiðr still, he’d have flicked a hand and thrown the door closed in her face, and it would have served as answer enough. “I am in no mood for idle conversation,” he said flatly instead, long fingers moving to tap an impatient tattoo upon the balustrade. When she did not move, his lips twisted around the next words as if they tasted of bitter gall. “You have my brother for that.”

“Do I?”

He did have more than a thousand things he might have said to that. He kept them to himself, just as he kept his back to her. She did not need to know anything about the power she held over him even now.

As the silence deepened into something tangible, something that could be breathed in and choked upon, Loki heard the shift of her slight weight. “But it’s nothing I need to talk to him about,” and the annoyance in her words made him want to throw his hands into the air and laugh like some villain quite removed from his sanity.

Turning instead, he leaned back, hands light upon his forearms. He could feel the warmth of blades pressed into the leather of his sleeves. “I find I am in no mood to discuss the infinity stones this evening. It will wait until morning.”

She scrunched up her face, shook her head. “It won’t.”

“I am in no mood for games, mortal. And neither should you be, considering these are those you may only lose.”

When she stepped across the threshold of door and balcony, she did so without the slightest trace of nervous energy, or fear. “You think you’re so good at them.” And there was something vicious in the way she grabbed the door’s handle, slid it closed so that it trembled in its metal cage. “But it doesn’t count if you’ve weighted the pieces and rigged the rules.”

The display of temper might have amused him, had he not spent too long too recently in company with the Allfather. “I have already provided you with one opportunity to gracefully bow out of this. I do not have another to offer you.”

Jane did not cross to him. Instead she stood before him as if she expected to be able to face down a creature nearer the divine that she could ever hope to be, and shook her head as if she found him little more than a disobedient child. “You’re like a black hole, you know,” she snapped, and when she tossed her head the dark hair whipped about her pale face, the blaze of dark eyes within. “Because you’ve sucked him in. And he’s gone past the event horizon. That point of no return. But for all he can keep trying and trying to reach the centre of you, he never will. The singularity can never be found. Maybe it doesn’t even exist at all.”

Loki smiled. “And you killed my mother.” Leaning forward from the waist, he added: “How does that feel?”

She reared back from the easy viciousness of it, even as he revelled in how the words became a lahar burning from his tongue, leaving scarred land in their wake. Those foolish mortal eyes were wide now with the things they could never have hoped to see alone. It was a victory too hollow to be worth the cost to himself.

And yet he could not stop himself from speaking. “You have never discussed this with my brother, have you.” His own chuckle ripped through the great veins around his heart, disrupting its beat, twisted it in painful spasm, “You have no idea how he lives from day to day, looking into your face, knowing that he has it only because the only other woman he ever gave a damn about gave up her life for yours.”

Despite the tremor of her tiny frame, she had not backed away. “I am not discussing this with you.”

“Oh, how the tables do turn.”

As unhealthy as her pale colour had become, colour burned high in her lovely cheeks. “If it had been my choice, I wouldn’t have made it this way.” And now the tremor entered her voice, eyes too bright. “In the end it was hers.”

But it was not the hurt in those dark eyes that hurt Loki now. Rather, it was the memory of eyes coloured like a sea of ancient sorrows. They’d lingered longest in his memory, even as the disappearing form had slipped away from him inch by inch. They’d always been familiar as time, insubstantial as smoke. She’d left behind her the soft scent of her gardens. He could still sometimes catch its ghost, in the deepest hours of night when no spell or blanket was enough to hold back the chill.

“This is why you must do this.” And he smiled. “To make her sacrifice worth something. She gave her divine Asgardian life for your mayfly Midgardian one: that is endless centuries counted against mere years. It is not a gift, but a debt you must repay.”

She gave a little snorting laugh, as if it were the only way to cover threatened tears. “Then let’s do it. Talk to me. We’ve got work to do.”

“No.” And at her incredulous look, he didn’t bother holding back his own bitter laughter. “There will come the morning. There always comes the morning, for people like us.”

“I am _nothing_ like you.”

“You can comfort yourself with that lie, if it pleases you.” Norns knew that he did. “It only makes it all the more true.”

Again he turned his back on her, and again she spoke when she should have held her tongue. Of course she spoke. The mortal had never lacked for courage, nor for plain idiocy. The girl had talked down the Allfather himself. Loki still could not decide if he admired her for that, or felt a fierce jealousy that she’d never know the agony of craving the old bastard’s approval.

“There’s something Thor never explained to me.” A muscle worked in her jaw, but her voice held firm. “Although maybe he never asked you.”

Loki rolled his tongue about his mouth, then did the same with his eyes for good measure. “And if he did not ask, what makes you believe that it has become your task?”

“Because I’m curious. And I like answers.”

In another life, perhaps they might have been allies. “Answers often lead to further questions.”

“And you think that’s any sort of revelation to me?”

The faint smile he found felt like the most miserable of victories. “Ask your question, Dr. Foster.”

“Why did you want Sullt and Hungr in the first place?” The names were like thrown daggers, very nearly hitting their targets, yet Jane seemed unaware of what she had done. “I mean, sure, I don’t know jack about a lot of your family history, joint or otherwise, but I kind of got the impression during all this that the people you were closest to were Thor and Frigga. And yet they were both still alive when you made whatever deal it was with Hela to get those from her.”

“And yet you don’t ask about the deal itself,” he observed, just able to hide how deeply she had rattled his caged heart, and she snorted.

“I think we both know what my chances are for getting any sort of answer to _that_.”

For the first time he began to wonder how those other lives might have gone: where they would be allies, and friends. “Is this question really any better?”

That made her smile, half-mast and cynical. “Well, the thing is, I think I already know the answer.”

“And you merely wish to challenge a hypothesis,” Loki completed, and she threw up her hands.

“That’s the magic of science. Or maybe it’s the backbone, I don’t know. Did you want it because it let you cut up the spaces between certain places?”

“Yes.” The word tasted of ash and smoke and stardust upon the numbness of lip and tongue. “There is also a legend that says it is the gateway to a space that is…perhaps paradise. I took it to mean Valhalla, personally, but I am not so certain of that.”

“Did you not find it?”

His laugh was short, very sharp. “I never had quite the _time_.” At her odd look, he wanted only to laugh all the harder. “It was shortly before Thor’s failed coronation that I obtained the bowl and the knife, and my own hypotheses remained untried and untested.”

“Ah.”

One indistinct conversational placeholder could hold so many meanings, both those secret and not. Loki turned his face away. “You may keep your next question to yourself. I have no intention of answering it.”

“Has Thor asked about it?”

He closed his eyes, felt no surprise that she had asked it anyway. “He has not.”

“You have to stop it, you know.” And now in her frustration he could hear the futility of her anger, and he hated her for it. She’d only known him mere days; it was impossible that she should care this much.

“I _must_ stop nothing.”

“He can’t keep on losing you over and over again.”

He wanted nothing more than to wheel on her, to press her backwards and up against a wall, face a mere breath from hers as he wielded the words as surely as any blade. Instead he spoke them in a fashion not dissimilar to that of a weary old man. “It is none of your concern.”

“I’m his friend. It’s totally my business.”

At that he did laugh, though it could have been mistaken for a rasping choke. “And you have very neatly attempted to bring us back around to the infinity stones.” Again, if he’d had his seiðr unbound, he’d had jerked the door open. Instead he just pushed a shoulder towards it. “Go find your bed, Dr. Foster. Drag my brother into it if you must, if it makes it easier to stay there.” And he turned away. “I will find my own.”

“He’s with you.”

“Well, we have been brothers for a dreadfully long time.”

“Yeah.” Her footsteps shuffled, then began their retreat. “ _Brothers_. Right.”

He hadn’t the energy to examine those words for meaning, or even for the pleasure of another victory as hollow as his heart. Instead Loki let his body slump along to the borrowed chamber, with its two tiny beds and one over-sized guest.

Thor had found his sleep, or seemingly so. It was but one thing on a long list of what he envied him for; only a strong draught allowed Loki to find dreamless rest in these days. It was a long way to morning, laid beneath the thin blankets, staring at a ceiling cracked with a passing of time that should have meant nothing at all to their kind.

The morning, when it arrived, did so in a fashion both grim and grey. Yet for all the night’s length, it seemed far too short a time before they stood together, an uneasy triumvirate, beneath the London sky. Unmoving though it was in its threatening cloud cover, the rain held itself gloomily back. Loki wanted nothing more than to turn to Thor, to spit out a litany of insult and lie, and then watch the lightning tear everything all to pieces.

But he held his tongue as Thor raised his face to unfamiliar heavens.

“Heimdall.” His voice rang across the heavens, splitting them asunder even before he shouted the words: “Open the Bifröst. Take us home.”


	14. 3.2: Pseudepigrapha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two quick notes: _wow_ this was longer than it should have been. My excuse is that Loki's a pain in my ass and fic is how I meta. Fuck. Secondly, when I first started thinking of finishing this story, I was just falling in love with Kyla La Grange. [This song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXoJ5WDEr5Q) says a lot about this chapter.
> 
> So. Now. Onto Loki making everything difficult for everyone. D:

“My chambers, I take it, have been emptied.”

Thor gave him a curious look from where his hands moved over the lock of his own chamber doors, expression oddly blank besides. “Did you truly expect otherwise?”

Impossible as it seemed, Thor still did not know – did not know that Loki could not expect otherwise because he already _knew_. Mere days before Loki had spoken to Jane in those very rooms, wearing the visage of a sleeping king. It had been the only way to lead her to Jötunheimr, knowing Thor would follow, because it was only there where he could reveal himself anew to his brother. It had a bitter taste, like ash taken from saltwater. But even without that distraction Loki doubted he would have predicted the next fool words out of his brother’s mouth.

“Do you wish for your bed to be made up?”

For a moment he only gaped. Then he glanced around, eyes quick up and down the corridor. They’d shed the mortal already, and there were always but few guards in the wing of the palace that had housed both princes. Once they’d reached manhood, it had been assumed that within the palace, at least, they could take care of themselves.

_And each other._

Having confirmed their solitude, and with a grin far blither than he felt, Loki tilted his body forward so that he might look up at Thor from beneath dark eyelashes. “Do you not believe that will seem strange indeed? That you have your mortal companion in her own room, but install your Jötunn whore in your brother’s empty chambers?”

Thor’s great shoulders moved smoothly beneath his armour, and he blinked only once. “Would you rather sleep with me in mine, then?”

Though Mjölnir remained silent on his hip, with those words alone Thor had set the air quite to humming life; though his Jötunn form was largely hairless, Loki could feel the buzz of current raising said hair like gooseflesh, coursing over and beneath his skin, insistent in the need to burrow deeper, into darker places. It polarised every inch of him, made him yearn to draw close to his polar opposite – and Thor’s hand tightened on the handle, voice turned raw, a husk of its usual booming self.

“Will you bathe with me too?”

Loki took a step backward, the smile on his face tremulous and strained. “What _did_ the Allfather say to you?”

It wasn’t until Thor tilted a strange look at his hands that Loki realised he’d raised them before himself like a shield. “Perhaps not what he said to you.”

Again he cast a searching gaze about the corridor, wondering when he’d begun to care what the guards thought of his doings. Thor had still not opened the doors. Raising one hand to tug the cloak tighter about his cursed form, Loki let a scowl mar his features. “I cannot believe he would encourage you to seek your pleasure in the Jötunn chill of your false brother’s body.”

“This is nothing to do with him.” Though he inclined forward, his hand remained with the door, like a lifeline stretched between them. “It is everything to do with you.”

“Oh, so you think that by taking that pleasure you can make me feel as though my body is more than the shell housing a monster?”

The thinned lips were the only true sign of rising temper, given the remarkable evenness of the words they spoke. “You never could take a simple action on its true merits.”

“Is that what you’re calling a pity fuck these days?”

Sometimes it felt too easy: Thor moved forward too fast to dodge, catching him by the arms. One twisting movement, like Thor was the wind and Loki but a leaf upon it, and his back slammed hard against the wall. “Do _not_ speak this way,” he growled, low and warning, and Loki found victory tasted like rotten fruit fallen far from its parent tree.

“Why not?” Pushing his hips roughly upward, he found the beginnings of arousal in them both. “It seems you like it.”

“This poison that drips from your lips.” His breath ghosted over those same lips; when Loki darted his tongue out, he could taste fallen summer, bright morning. Thor’s eyes followed the movement, pupils blown wide enough that the darkness almost entirely swallowed the blue. His throat worked convulsively, the whispered words troubled and uneven. “How often have I drunk such willingly from the same?”

So close: too close. It would be but the work of a moment to kiss those twisted lips, to take from them more than he could stand. Loki turned his head. The chill had settled deep in his bones, and as a Jötunn he supposed he would never be free of it.

“I am sure your mortal wonders where you are.”

“Loki.”

He turned back, a tense wire in his brother’s bruising grasp, just waiting to be overloaded with charge and fury. “Does it not bother you? To want this of me, and know she has no inkling of the perversions you desire from your own brother?”

With a grunt of low disgust, Thor let go. Surefooted and quick, Loki took first one, then two, then three light steps backward. But he did not go far. He stood his ground, chin tilted high, inviting a blow. It never fell. Thor only shook his head as if disbelieving of the actions taken before his very eyes.

_Why should you ever be surprised by anything I say, brother?_ Loki thought, fierce and furious even his eyes prickled and his stomach lurched. Empty hands twitched at his sides, heart fallen from rhythm as if struck by lightning. _After all this time, surely there is nothing left to surprise you?_

Such thoughts held the bitter frost of winter come too soon. And yet Thor shook his head again, hair glinting in the golden light of the sconces lining the vaulted hall. His eyes were the blue skies of summers taken in times far better than these.

“Do you truly believe I will take that bait, when you are the one who insisted we not speak of it until all this is done?”

Nothing in the tilt of the question suggested he thought it rhetorical; the great body relaxed into one long curve where it rested against the lintel of the doors, and Loki found he had to turn away. “So much for the honour of the god of thunder,” he muttered, and Thor gave a short laugh.

“We played at games of honour as children.” One palm rested upon his shoulder, too broad and too warm to be borne. “I always believed that what seemed so simple then would come true when we had grown.”

Loki shook it away, but turned back to him. “And yet here we are.”

“Yes. Here _we_ are.” His hands moved up, then dropped, as if rethinking their motion before their master could mistake them. But his eyes never broke from his. “You were at my side then. You are at my side now. Little else might be as I expected, but that at least is how it should be.”

“Thor.” He should have been laughing. Instead all he could feel was the rising hysteria of tears he would not, could not shed now. “Will you never learn?”

“Will you never cease your tricks?”

“What more do I have to offer anyone?”

The rawness of it echoed in the silence that followed; there were few sentences spoken Loki had wished more to take back. The creak of the opening door startled through him; Thor’s eyes held wry amusement as he stepped through. His chambers glowed like warm embers behind him, haloing him with crimson and gold. In this he could have stood on the threshold of paradise.

“You may sleep where suits you, Loki. Either in my chambers with their comforts of now, or in your own with what remains of that life you used to know.” Fingers tightened on the door itself, but his remained steadied. “Take your choice, Loki. It is your own.”

“And what of yours?”

“I have made mine already.” He stepped back, consumed by the light. The closing of the door was but a sigh, and it did not latch. “Good night, Loki.”

Later, alone in the rooms that had once been those of Loki Odinson, the Jötunn-skinned creature that prince had become stripped himself bare. Only then would he lay down on the bed, empty of everything save the feather-stuffed mattress. With his eyes closed, arms spread wide, he opened his mouth to laugh at the futility of it all. No sound came. He choked instead on the scent of so many days ago, in a room that had been that of yet another Loki: spilled wine, crushed berries, the harsh acrid tang of seiðr burned out against its limitations.

There was no fire here, no warmth of blanket or sheet or company. He could rise. He could go. But the crushing need to move could be held back only by the more cutting power of utter inertia.

 

*****

 

The gardens remained lovely even without the easy shadow of their mistress passing amongst the boughs and buds. Something about that hurt, and badly. He had never come here while wearing Odin’s face. It was but one of many prices paid: he had been unable to walk the worlds in his own skin, and only because he did not want the attentions of the mad Titan.

The skies above were clear of all cloud, the air soft and clean. He could only fix his eyes upon one place: the constellation writ in the soul of a fallen warrior. In the days since Frigga had passed over, from behind Odin’s impassive features Loki had often enough watched Heimdall as the gatekeeper gazed upon her scattered stars. He had never known what those golden eyes saw that his did not, even when he had mighty Hliðskjálf to enhance his sight.

He turned away. It was still soothing to know that she was there, a weightless hand upon his brow as he slept. But tugging the cloak around him tighter did not suppress his shiver, nor the terrible irony of a body made for ice and snow feeling a cold he might never escape from.

It would be far too easy to go back inside the palace – easier than it had been to leave. He could walk again familiar corridors, finding at their end doors which had forever been open to him. Thor always burned a merry fire in his chambers, even at the height of summer. As a child, he had so often tired himself out, sitting up in bed with wooden sword at one side, “protecting” the palace from monsters no-one but he could see. Only Frigga had known how to teach him to lay down his arms: a handful of blessed incense, scattered amongst the logs. A balm to keep away the monsters. Thor had never quite given up that sweet scent, even when he’d learned to sleep like a soldier and wake at the first glimmer of imminent attack.

Loki did not know who would prepare the herbs of such a protective spell in Frigga’s absence. His eyes fell down to his own hands. In the darkness they shifted like shadows, inky and strange. Only the raised lines of a monstrous heritage gave them true definition. Closing long fingers into his palm, he chuckled without sound. He knew the ingredients, he knew the method. But then monsters could never hope to replicate the simple purity of a mother’s love.

“I heard tale of Thor’s lovely new guest. You have garnered yourself quite the reputation during your time in Vanaheimr, my lady Járnsaxa.”

Loki stiffened, but he did not turn. He knew the voice as well as any other. “Is that so.”

The crunch of fine gravel beneath leather told of his closer approach, but Loki’s creeping skin would had said the same even in silence. “Might I introduce myself?”

“It seems you will whether I invite it or not.”

“Oh, such a quick tongue for a thrall!”

Despite the other’s delight, Loki’s own laughter was utterly without humour. “Did the tale of my emancipation not reach so far, then?”

“But of course.” He seemed not at all disturbed by the way Loki remained motionless as any rooted tree in the queen’s garden, nor by the way the cloak wrapped about him as if a cocoon. Instead Fandral moved closer yet, his voice as light as liquid honey. “You must have impressed him so, to offer it.”

Loki offered him nothing but silence in return. Above, Frigga’s constellation murmured with light, soft and knowing and always, always there.

“Might I ask to look upon the face of true beauty?”

The smile moved within the confines his hood. It did not matter that it was a cold lie. “I am Jötunn.”

“And so very lovely, or so I am told.”

Playing a role to suit the situation was a skill he’d learned many a year ago, but something about this one bubbled over his ridge-riddled skin like acid. Curving his fingers about the cloak’s throat, Loki kept his face in shadow even as he turned it towards the stars. “I was under the impression Asgardians had no care for my kind.”

Had he been one of his boorish war-mates, Loki had no doubt Fandral’s laughter would have been followed by a hearty slap to his back. “We have had our troubles, this cannot be denied.”

“And so shall lay my troubles at your door, o dashing knight?”

Though he had not quite intended to tilt towards invitation, Fandral’s rich scent of mead and musk filled his nostrils, the man having come one step too close. And then he swept a bow right at his feet, fur-trimmed cape sweeping across the glitter of the pathway. “If it might ease them, then I will invite them – nay, I shall welcome them, before I slay each and every one to lay dead at your lovely feet.”

And now the laughter escaped, too true to be entirely bitter. “Still full of it as ever I see, Fandral.”

He did not stand. Instead he raised his head, down upon one knee in courtly turn. The blood drained from his face as if a dagger had been drawn across his throat. “… _Loki_?”

Even with the hood still up, Fandral still flinched away from his smile. “Apparently so.”

For a long moment Loki suspected he might turn and go. And then he had to tamp down fierce upon the small gladness that came when Fandral pushed to his feet, one hand absent over the jewelled pommel of his sabre. “Well, in all honesty, I _did_ believe that you would not go so easily into that dark night.” Despite the guile of his words, the whiskey-coloured eyes held a flint-sharp warning. “I am assuming that Thor knows.”

“Oh, of course not. I only came back for _you_.” Loki gurgled a laugh low in his blue-ridged throat, one hand sweeping back the cloak’s hood to reveal the long braided hair beneath – and the alien skin too. His smile held brittle promise as he curved close, eyes too warm to be kind. “You see, _you_ have always had my heart, fair Fandral. Now will you take your sword and bear me home to your castle where you might make me your bride and beloved?”

Fandral’s hand fell away from the hilt. “Do not tempt me,” he said, mild, and even as his insides clenched tight about themselves Loki only laughed.

“With all the wenches knocking down your chamber door? I should hardly think a Jötunn thrall would be much competition.”

Taking a careful step backward, Fandral tilted his head. “Is this truly your Jötunn form, then?” he asked, curious; even though there was little enough to see with the cloak still about his shoulders, Loki hid his flinch away beneath his scorn.

“No.”

The searching look this earned him pushed his frayed temper to boiling point. Loki felt it sharply, the desire to ram a knife up his nose and twist it until he squealed, but the urge held little real venom. He’d been resisting it for centuries, and while it might bring some particular satisfaction tonight, there was other work to be done.

And this was his mother’s sanctuary.

“You seem very much like the Loki I know,” Fandral said, sudden, his skin still too pale in the evening light. Loki rolled his eyes.

“The Loki you knew never existed.”

“Oh, it’s to be word games this evening, then?” When he folded his arms over his chest, it was with comfortable ease. “Surely it’s too late for such games.”

“Surely it’s too late for you to be still upon your hunt.” Loki opened his eyes a little too wide, enjoying how not even Fandral’s notoriously even temper could hide the slight shudder at the crimson of them. “Are there tonight no wenches fool enough to fall for a pair of pretty blue eyes and a well-gilded sword? Or did your credit at the tavern finally give out under the weight of all the mead you ply the poor women with?”

“I am glad that fortune instead brought us together.”

Always the diplomat, and Loki scoffed. “I’ve known you since before you knew which hole your cock was _traditionally_ supposed to go in. Leave off the honeyed words, I have no need of them.”

“You always did prefer silver,” he observed, and then narrowed his eyes. “Or was it gold?”

“Oh, but you forget: silver tarnishes so very easily. Gold does not. We know which metal binds me best.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you ever really considered your situation.”

The change in subject was accompanied by the itching need to put his fingers around a throat and choke sense into a lost cause. “Excuse me,” Loki said, ice cold, “but it has always been very hard for me _not_ to consider a situation that was used to make my life a misery from the time I was old enough to realise I was no man in Asgard’s eyes.”

_And in one eye in particular, always_.

Fandral gave a light laugh, one as insubstantial as his flashy dress. “Oh, Loki,” and how he wanted to slap the pity from his bright eyes. Seeming to sense as much, Fandral drew back, hands held high. “Now, now, there’s no need for blades.”

“I would rather put a fist to your pretty face.”

“On any other occasion, I might allow you to try,” he said, cheerful to a fault. “But this is too opportune a moment to let slide so ignominiously by.”

Not even the tranquillity Frigga had imbued into her gardens could stop Loki from now wishing to put the fop’s head through a tree trunk. “What on you bleating on about now?”

“What makes you Loki.”

“You know nothing of Loki.”

“Your seiðr, then.”

“And you know _nothing_ of my seiðr.”

“True, enough.” And he smiled, too pure and too simple. “But under the queen’s tutelage you became perhaps the greatest seiðmaðr she ever knew.”

His eyes burned, as did his skin in the light of the constellation most directly overhead. “I have never been partial to mindless flattery, Fandral.”

“No, you have.” In his surprise, Loki’s mouth only dropped open; slick and sleek as he was, Fandral dodged easily into another conversational branch. “But consider it, Loki: your seiðr becomes your greatest strength, and the Einherjar speak ever louder of how you will never be a true warrior.”

His nails dug so hard into his palms he could feel the grooves welling with his cursed true blood. “Yes, I recall as much.”

“Because you believed that it was to mock your skills,” Fandral parried easily, and then struck again before Loki could return the blow. “Did it never occur to you that they might fear what you would inevitably become?”

He turned away, lips pressed to a thin line, heart a struggling hummingbird fighting for purchase in his chest. “I do not have the time for this.”

“What would it make you but this: a son who is both mighty seiðmaðr and true warrior.” Fandral’s voice floated upon the still air of the garden, as sure and certain as any seeress’s pronouncement. “Would that not be what Odin’s true heir _should_ be?”

Loki went very still.

“Thor has Mjölnir, of course.” Fandral’s step closer only seemed casual, but Loki knew the caution of a soldier behind the movement. “But what seiðr he has, it is innate. It comes from instinct and need. You have something far more practised and purposeful.”

The spin about came too fast, too vicious. “Did Thor send you here?”

“I have not even seen him this evening. You entered the city too late, and he is entertaining no guests.”

Fandral stood before him with no fear, and Loki closed his eyes. The prickle of the words dug deep thorns into his mind: the thought of that body, tangled in his sheets, the half-slumbering fire all scented autumn embers. In the years between childhood and adulthood, Thor had lost all preference for sleeping clothed.

“You should stick to tumbling wenches, Fandral,” Loki murmured, eyes closed and hands curled to fists. “Philosophy in the evenings does not suit you.”

“You are something different to him, of course. Thor does have a charisma, a force of personality that draws all to him.” He paused, just a moment. “But then you have something entirely your own.”

When Loki looked to him again, he found the fool watching the sky; the rippling river of a nearby galaxy reflected too well against the gold of his eyes. “Do your women truly fall for your drivel, Fandral?”

“Apparently so.” When he looked back, his lips had curled ruefully beneath the careful coiffure of his moustache. “But then they don’t always regard a conversation as a battleground.”

“More fool them.” Two fingers curved about the hem of his hood. “I will take my leave.”

“No.” It was said so sharp and so strong that Loki’s hand fell away. “This is your mother’s garden. If anyone should leave, it shall be me.”

He had meant the words to be dismissive. He did not know how they managed to be hurt. “How gallant.”

“Not every face a person presents to the worlds is an act, Loki.”

This time, when Loki met those over large and near-girlish eyes, he did so with cold collection. “Thor does this, upon occasion. Attempts to show that he is something more than muscle and hammer and thunder wrapped in glittering armour.” And he smiled without caring. “You are a fop, Fandral. And it suits you. There is no need to be ought else when it serves you so very well.”

But Fandral had never taken an insult to heart that he had shown. “Does this form serve you well, then?”

“Wouldn’t _you_ like to know.”

He’d curled his lips about the words the wrong way, and he knew it even before one hand came to rest upon his shoulder. The simple warmth of it shuddered down his spine even through the thick leather of his cloak. Loki stared at it, and did not move.

“I did not say you could touch me.”

Fandral’s own eyes remained on where they were joined, gone strangely dark and blank. “Hmm.”

“How very like you, Fandral – you encounter something exotic and entirely outside the realm of your own experience, and your first instinct is to stick your cock in it.”

With tilted head, Fandral raised both eyebrows with injured surprise; Loki had often enough seen him pull the same gesture on many a petulant barmaid. He still did not remove his hand. “I would not phrase it in _quite_ that manner,” he said, reproachful, and Loki found himself leaning into the touch with an ugly grin.

“Oh, so it’s to be flowers and verse before the ritual fucking, perhaps?”

The smile he wore was perfect welcome. “Shall we?”

Loki stepped smartly back, amusement turned quite to disgust. “We shall not,” he snapped, and Fandral only shook his head.

“And you are the one who said that I should stick to fornication rather than philosophy.”

“I asked you to stop plying me with the latter, not attempting to seduce me to the former.” Without quite intending it, Loki raised his hand to his collar, closed his hand over the raven pin he found there. “And truly, do you believe Thor would take kindly to it?”

“I did once entertain the thought of asking him.”

Fandral’s capacity to surprise him had never sat well with Loki. “What, if you might sodomise his baby brother?” he said, and laughed. “I cannot for the life of me imagine why you chose not to risk it.”

Only a smile did this earn him in response, and a carless shrug. The easiness of it was probably why he spat it out.

“Besides, Thor might take umbrage at your sampling of that which he himself has not yet tasted.”

They were words even the strength of his seiðr could not take back. Yet any fear he buried deep beneath defiance. Fandral’s deep eyes, however, held nothing but recognition of known fact.

“I did always wonder,” he murmured, soft, and Loki’s laughter barked across the space between.

“You could at least pretend some surprise.”

Fandral only blinked. “Is there any need?”

In a way he could not understand why he had tried to shock Fandral with such words. “You always did imagine the worst of everyone, when it came to the contents of their bedchambers,” he said with an easy sneer, and again Fandral only chuckled.

“No small wonder, then, that you and I should get along so well.” When he stepped forward, his pupils had opened wide again, inviting a fall; his voice was as sweet and lovely as water cascading down a valley. “You always imagine the worst of the contents of another’s very soul,” Fandral murmured, too close. Loki scowled, turned away, but did not step back.

Then Fandral sighed, stepped away. “But that is not the duel I would ask of you,” he said, and again his eyes were too curious on what little Jötunn skin was revealed to him. “You always did hold back too much of yourself,” he murmured, and Loki’s temper flashed hot.

“Oh, I am sorry I did not adopt a frost giant’s flesh in the training arena when we were younger. It might have something to do with the small matter of my being lied to about it my entire life.”

Fandral had never been one to rise to such bait. When he shook his head, he wore the same damnable smile Loki had so many times wished to forcefully remove from his features. “Intriguing as you may ever be in this form, Loki, it is not your true one.”

It was all too easy to let the feminine aspects that made him Járnsaxa slip away, leaving him in the default configuration of his Jötunn flesh. “In fact this is how I was born,” he said, tone fit to wither summer itself. Fandral’s smile only became more lopsided, the sparkle in his eyes like an invitation to sin.

“Ply your trade as you will, Loki Silvertongue, but you will convince no-one that this is your true form.” Strangely, his smile faded. “Not even yourself.”

“If you were not already leaving I would have your own tongue for that.”

“Oh, and here I thought you had no interest in my mouth at all.” With a flourish, Fandral pressed a light kiss to his fingertips. But instead of blowing the kiss to Loki, he folded those swordsman’s fingers into his callused palm. Then this fist he pressed to his chest; when he inclined his head, it set the blond hair aflame with Asgard’s golden twilight.

“My prince,” he said, his smile no longer crooked at all, “I shall take my leave, until we meet again.”

“Fool.” But then Loki could not be sure who it was directed to.

 

*****

 

“I have spoken with your brother’s pet mortal.”

Only by very great exercise of will did Loki manage to show no surprise at the voice from the corridor. With one hand clenched tight over his thigh, hidden beneath the artful fall of his Jötunn robes, he turned in his alcove and gave a brittle smile to his king.

“Oh, does he appreciate her being named so?” he asked, feather-light for all he treasured the bad light of dawning morn. “Because whether or not you believe her place in the kennels, he has ever believed otherwise.” Chuckling, hoarse and hard, he tossed the book aside. “Though then you have always had a good eye for a bitch in heat.”

Mild of voice and of step, Odin came deeper into the library’s furthest reading room. “We both know that he has never touched her.”

“Oh, but he _has_.”

“But not as he touches you.” Loki longed for the book back so he might heave it across the room, but Odin’s voice floated through the half-darkness uninterrupted, a dammed river seeking to correct its course.

“Is it such a victory, then,” he mused, “to know you take those touches from her and give them to yourself instead? That you debase fraternal ties just to spite a child whose life is but a candle to our long-lived flame?”

His returned chuckle was elegant, fragile and lovely as blown glass. “How lovely it is to know how deeply it troubles you. That your son is so willing to rut with a frost giant.”

“It has nothing to do with frost giants.” And now Odin stepped into what little light Loki had brought in which to read, a monster emerging from a fairytale. “But what would your mother say?”

Loki had to turn his face. The bruises upon his thigh deepened, echoed by the rounded grooves left by his nails. “I am certain she saw farther than you might believe.”

“You have no idea what I might believe.” Now he had come too close, and Loki had miscalculated; in the windowseat, there was no ground over which to retreat. Yet Odin only sighed, as if he could read his mind after all. “But that is not why I came to you now.”

Loki could only stare. A night without sleep had left his mind addled and odd, not at all fit for an unexpected verbal duel with the Allfather. Yet when he looked to the old man, that was not what troubled him most. Instead his mind shifted like a worm-riddled carcass, twisting the thought of this: that the fireplace in Thor’s great bedchamber would now be filled with nothing but ash, and he would wake alone. Even such a golden son would feel that unkind chill, one that could not be chased away as the sun began to spread golden fingers across the land, caressing Asgard to wakefulness.

“Do tell,” Loki said at last, dry as winter desert. “I am salivating with my eagerness to hear the Allfather’s latest proclamation.”

“I have something for you.”

The scorn upon his lips evaporated there the moment he recognised the battered leather of the journeybag held between them.

“Loki?” That one eye had narrowed, but to something far closer to concern than impatience. “Do you not wish them after all?”

“Do not mock me.” It rasped through him, a sandstorm that twisted his throat and grated at his eyes, crisscrossing them with salt and blood. He did not reach out, but his eyes did not let go of the offering. And he laughed. “Why do you taunt me with what you will not give?”

Even when they were laid in his hands, Loki did not believe their weight. The tremor of his hands could not be masked even by the way his hands convulsively gripped it, pulling it away from Odin and against his chest. He would not look up. He could not look up.

“I do not expect you to keep the promises you have made me, Loki,” Odin said, again but half-distinct in the shadows of the reading room. “You wish to extricate yourself from the grip of the mad Titan, and aiding you in this protects the Realms I swore myself to millennia ago.” And he half-turned, golden eye guard winking in the candelight. “But you are a fool if you believe it nothing more than a business transaction between us.”

“I could take them all.” They moved in his hands, sudden and strange, like living things roused by his own rapid heartbeat. “I could take them and I could run. And how _far_ I could run, with six infinity stones in my hands.”

“And your every footstep would be dogged by that which you left behind,” he observed, his voice as weary as the dust that lay in thick reams over everything stored in this forgotten chamber. “The only way you might outrun your own heart is by carving it from your chest.” He paused, and then, as if unintended: “And even then he will still seek you out just to put it back where it belongs.”

“How it must burn you.” He could feel the sharp of the blade, even through the enchanted spell-worked leather. “To know that the child you stole has stolen your own in return.”

“The Norns give us but what we deserve, Loki.” Gnarled fingers moved over delicate spines, a crackling whisper in their wake. “I am sure she would tell you but the same.”

He laughed. As a shield, it buffered but little of such a strike. “Her words in your mouth? You never listened to her when you should have.”

And strangely, Odin challenged him not. “She always was the better part of me,” he said, and for a dreadful moment Loki could not see. Hs eyes had blurred as if a thousand soul-lanterns had been unleashed before him, reflected by river and sky and in the tears of everyone who wept for what was passed. Then Odin moved and the illusion was gone, and he could not even tell if it had been the old bastard’s seiðr or his own treacherous traitorous mind.

“Go, Loki. Speak with her first, and then break your promises as you will. Even I know when to allow the Norns to take a pattern to completion.”

The fury should have driven him forward, drawing the blade from the leather, driving it deep between his ribs and up into his traitor’s heart. Instead Loki was still and stiff and silent. The broad back moved farther distant, and Loki remembered how once it had stood so straight; when he had been but a child, his father’s height had seemed to take him almost to the stars. And now here he was, not even a true giant, not even a true _son_ , and he still stood higher.

Loki turned away, but could not escape the burning in his eyes. On Svartálfaheimr he’d woken alone in the cold, his unfulfilled bargain with Hela the only the reason why death had passed him over once more. It hadn’t been as if he’d _wanted_ to die, but everything had happened too fast. Any opening for escape he could not take, because his idiot of an elder brother was having his thick skull pounded into Svartálfaheimr dust. Then there had been the knife through his gut, the moment of knowing the world was throwing him aside one last time. In the end it had been dying in his arms, only to wake and find those same arms had left him to rot alone in the dark and the cold.

He had returned alone, too. And there, before the mighty throne Hliðskjálf, Loki the undying had made his deal with the broken and bitter god-king he’d once named _father_. It would mean his freedom, at a cost – that of Asgard’s destined king, enthroned.

Through the dust-streaked glass Loki could see a rising sun. Thor would be awake soon enough. And this was Loki’s moment alone. While he did not doubt his brother would have much to say to their mother, should he be given opportunity, he was not the one who had denied her at the last. Who had said nothing with all the petty pride of a child, who had watched her disappear believing they would have a thousand years to play at such foolishness, who had never known that at day’s end she would have quietly withdrawn her presence from the board altogether.

There was no doubt in him that she had known. He remembered too well the sadness in her eyes as she’d smiled, as she’d gone away. Such guile from Odin would have driven Loki to madness. But then the old king would have played such a cruel hand for the satisfaction of its irony. Frigga knew the weave of a thousand universes or more: she had let this one stand because she knew that it would be the one to bring her sons to the lives she had always wished for them.

“But you should be here.” The drawstring wound tight about his fingers, numbing them, choking them. “You should never have _left_.”

All logic said he would be better to leave it until later. When Thor awoke the great galoot would be looking for him, of that Loki had no doubt. The only time Thor had ever left him to his own devices was when he thought him dead. When he woke and realised that Loki had never joined him, Thor would not rest until he had located again his wayward brother.

The bag had opened and Loki had no real recollection of doing it himself. They lay before him upon the leather unfurled across his palms. To an untrained eye they were but simple constructs: an earthenware bowl, and a knife with a stone handle and an obsidian blade. Loki had never known truly what it could cut. Examining it now, the blade seemed very dark against the Jötunn-blue of his arm, even purpled as it was by the crimson of approaching morning.

It could not be done in her gardens. Not after the fool conversation he’d fallen into there with Fandral the night before. He should regret what he’d said about Thor – no doubt Fandral would mention it to his brother, and if he did not then the moment Sif heard _she_ certainly would. Loki did not even know precisely what this was, and bringing it out beyond the two of them could only make it more complicated. And yet he could not regret it. It was no more of a weight than anything else he bore upon his cursed shoulders these days.

He did know that the queen’s chambers remained untouched. Odin had made no orders for their emptying in the days after death, the only items removed being those few that had been arrayed about her in her longboat. When Loki came to step into her chambers, their lingering wards shifting soft as a sigh over his alien skin, he felt to have been transported back weeks, months – to those days when she had been alive. In some ways it was not so long ago. In other ways it was as if she had lived a million lightyears before.

But it had not been Odin’s order to treat her rooms as if she’d merely gone to Vanaheimr with her ladies in tow, to gossip and gather and work her seiðr with her Vanir sisters in ways that the Asgardian warrior would never truly appreciate. It had been the Allfather’s proclamation, and Loki himself had worn that mask to give it.

Although Loki had since surrendered Gungnir back to her master, that order had not been rescinded. It trapped him between surprise and disappointment; he felt both, and neither. Perhaps Odin did not even know why he had done it; one day, would he himself come here to mourn the woman who had given his life the gentle curves that kinghood had skimmed away from his own trickster soul?

Loki drew a shuddering breath. The bowl he held in one hand, the knife in the other. Her morning room lay beyond this next door, a great open space that opened on Asgard’s eastern aspect. So easily it opened without word nor touch: he might not be Ása-Loki in this form, but Frigga had accepted him as her son even before he himself had known who Loki was.

Loki had never been told where it had happened. The blood had been cleaned away even before it had dried. And yet he thought not a thing as he went unerringly to the place where she had died.

It was as though the world should have stopped there. There should have been silence, chill, an empty space, a void in the universe left by her passing. But sitting upon the step he could hear the distant birdsong of the earliest risers, and even through the leathers he now wore the sun was gentle warmth against his alien skin.

His hand shook when he set the bowl down upon the place her hand had fallen. Again he simply _knew_. He had no understanding of why, or the conduit that passed said understanding: his seiðr, her spirit, the knife, the bowl, or perhaps only the Norns mocking the circumstances of his choices as they always did. But she was near, and all he needed do was part the veil that separated them.

Kneeling upon the lowest stair like a penitent before the altar, Loki raised the knife. The blade, black in the light, held an unnatural shimmer; it seemed to absorb light, rather than reflect it. But it was not the first time he’d examined the thing. He had taken it for matters others than this – when he’d made his deal with Hela, there had been no soul he sought to converse with on the other side. Those whose lives he cared about had been beside him. He had never imagined a time when they would not be.

Holding it before him with both hands, Loki turned Sullt over and over again. This infinity stone was named both bowl and knife, but he’d thought it was the blade that was the true heart of the artefact: the singularity of it distilled into a subtle knife that could slice open spaces between dimensions. Could split open souls entire.

Loki closed his eyes, and made his cut.

There was nothing, at first. Just the darkness inside his own mind. He knew it too well. Sometimes he could even still sense the tart aftertaste of the wine she had always sent him. While it had been bitter at first because of their perceived betrayal, in the end it had been because of his own.

He would never drink it again, but it was upon his lips now. Even as he grimaced, then gagged, he felt the change: the scent of sweet spring, with the earliest buds and the budding grasses. Slippers moved soft across the floor, and he heard rather than saw the elegant sweep of a hand, the trailing sleeve, the jingle of the golden links worn about her waist.

Loki gasped a sharp breath, felt the fresh oxygen burn through his thoughts, but still could not open his eyes. A hand came to rest upon one shoulder, light as a passing breeze. His own fingers tightened upon the handle, blade clattering into the empty bowl. Then his hands began to shake, fierce as any earthshock, the click of false-obsidian against not-clay beating like a hammer against his addled thoughts. The hand moved upward, trailing up over neck and jaw and cheek so she might brush his hair back from a forehead no longer smooth, but carven with ridges and line.

“Oh, Loki,” and it came on a sigh like a forgotten song, the lullaby echo of lost childhood days. “Oh, _Loki_.”

While he felt the desire to move, he might as well have been made of ice: a serac driven upward by the movement of ancient glaciers. Such a construct could fall only under the pressure of its own weight. Its own underworkings. Its own guilt.

“My son.” And then her arms came around him, her spirit an enveloping warmth. “My _son_.”

Always so very strong, Frigga: even when she had no body to call her own. One arm locked about his waist, the palm cradling his head, drawing him close, his face pressed against her breast if he were no more than the blue-skinned infant he had been the first they met. With that, the burning in his eyes became a free-running river of saltwater – because he _knew_ it. There was no need to ask. Frigga had seen him as he was. She had always known him for everything he had been, would be, could ever be.

There were no words. Certainly Loki had none of his own left. Even his sobs held barely any sound of their own. It left but the shaking of his shoulders, the heave of his abdomen under the pressure of a misery that swelled up from every inch of his tortured frame. Hands fisted in her fine gown, tearing at ephemeral seams.

For all his research into Sullt and Hungr, he had no idea if there was any sort of time limit upon its effects. As the moments ticked by without conversation, he could not bring himself to care. Even if he’d ever been able to let go of his pride long enough to ask, he could never have been held this way in his cell. Frigga had been but an ephemeral casting each time she’d come to him, and he had been alone even when she’d been there – or so he’d told himself. It had made it easier, right up until the moment she had gone and he’d destroyed everything he’d never appreciated.

Though it hurt to admit it, had Thor not come to him in that cell of regrets after her death, he’d have lost what little of his sanity had remained to him. At least in the void, there had been ways of forgetting. In that cell there had been nothing but memory, and it had come so very close to suffocating him.

Loki did not realise he had stilled until she gentled him backward, upward, bringing him to sit at her side. With eyes already aching, looking at her _burned_ : she was as the heart of a sun. Yet her hands were cool upon his skin, before they were then replaced by the soft silk of fabric woven upon her loom.

The solidity of it in his hands left dazed fingers fumbling for a grip. But then she withdrew it entire, her hands very gentle where she began to run it over his face. “I can…” Hoarse, he choked on his own words, and did not raise his hands at all. “…I can do it myself, Mother.”

“Yes, you can.” She did not look into his eyes, one hand steadying him between collarbone and jaw while the other went about a mother’s work. “But you do not have to. I am here.”

From this lowered angle he could look up into her eyes; so strong in the colour she had given to her eldest son. The urge to sob once more came over him hard, childish as it was. But already she was leaning back, settling upon her step. The handkerchief she pressed into one limp hand, before folding her own carefully in her lap.

“I have missed you,” she said, as simple and inevitable as spring’s awakening. “But you do look well.”

His fingers tightened about the cloth almost to the point of tearing. “I look like a monster.”

“Well, certainly you were _some_ brand of small monster when you were a toddler. But then so was Thor, and I never sought to give either of you back.” The gentleness of her expression took the sting from the words. “I’m not going to deny you the truth, Loki. You are born of Jötnar parents, and you are Jötunn by blood.” Her eyes hardened then, voice taking on the command that could make even Odin Allfather consider his options. “But you are my son and if you deny that to my face again, this time I will not hesitate to take you over my knee.”

Something like a laugh, a sob, and he only just resisted the urge to throw himself upon her mercy once more. “Why didn’t you the last time?”

“You know why.”

And he smiled, even though it was nothing but tears. “Mother, am I doing the right thing?”

“Loki.” The hand upon his cheek felt like coming home. But there was bitterness in the memory of how he’d reached for her in those days of ago, and she’d disappeared before he felt the softness of her skin against his own. This blue sheath over his jagged soul was rough now, like sharkskin. But she traced the raised ridges there without fear nor pain, as if reading secrets he himself was too afraid to ever seek for himself.

_But if she knows them, and still loves me_ —

“You should be kinder to Jane Foster.” It was as if his ice-riddled heritage had taken hold of him entire, but her touch was still warm. “What I gave for her, I gave willingly,” she added, and Loki’s fist connected light with one thigh.

“But it was part of a greater scheme, and she must play her part.”

“Which she would have done, whether you attempted to force her hand or not.” At the half-hearted glare he gave her then, she only smiled, passed her hand over his forehead. “You know I cannot tell you of the things I have seen in the weave of the worlds, even when I myself have passed beyond the threads which bind you still.” He tried to look away, but she would not allow it, eyes as relentless as starheart-forged uru. “But for all there is a pattern, the loom is still at work. You are not slaved to your destiny, but rather forged by it. And even the anvil cannot be unchanged by the hammer that is beaten upon it.”

Something like quiet sorrow had grown from seed to dull blossom in her bright eyes. This time she let him turn his face away, skin alight with shame.

“You do not approve of what Thor and I have done,” he whispered, and she sighed.

“It is not what I would have wished for you, perhaps.”

“Or for your perfect golden son?” He would have allowed the bitterness to drive distance between him, but even as his body shifted to one side she looped one hand about his waist, pulled him close to her side.

“Loki, this is no time for your lies.” Though they held fresh urgency, these were words of long ago. “You will listen, and you will not hear what it is you think I say – rather, you will hear what it is that I do say.”

“I always have.”

“O my son,” and now her hands were gentle, bringing his head down upon her shoulder, “oh, how wrong I have done by you, all these years.”

The pulse in her throat was but an imagining, a construct of a past life, and yet he found comfort in it all the same. “It is not so strange, that you should love him best,” he murmured, and Frigga snorted.

“But it is so strange, that you should think that true when every shred of evidence points to the opposite.” One finger moved, flicked him gently on the nose. “And no, I will not tell him I said that.”

The sudden bark of laughter ripped free from his chest, and yet was surprisingly bloodless. Frigga smiled, rearranged her skirts with her free hand, and then shook her head.

“Oh, Loki – do you truly believe that it was easy for me, when I married your father?” The tenderness of her expression held long memories when Loki gaped at her, and her hand rested tenderly on his brow, pushing back the sweat-soaked hair at his temples. “I had been promised to Odin. It was no love match.”

“What?” And then, just because it hurt, “Why are you telling me this?”

“There are those of us who have as much choice in our spouses as we all do in our parents.” He had raised his head now, but still they were pressed together from shoulder to hip, and her face was close enough to kiss. And she sighed. “But even if this choice is made for us, there are choices we are free to make ourselves.”

“Those choices cannot be made in a vacuum.”

“There were others he would have preferred,” she agreed, pleasantly. “But I am the one his father had him take to bride.”

“He should be grateful for it.”

“In the end, he was. Very much so.” A secret smile graced her lips, one for once he did not really wish to understand too deeply. “But there are always beginnings,” she said, soft, “before there are endings.”

He glanced away. The spot where she had fallen remained clean of all blood, but the iron upon his tongue still burned.

“Odin never did answer your question about why he took you from Jötunheimr, did he.”

Loki closed his eyes, wanted to sob as much as laugh. It figured, that she would attempt to answer a question even as her husband dodged it unto eternity. “What reason could there have really been?” he muttered, and sighed when her arms tightened about him further, her chin resting upon the crown of his head.

“I am not sure. Often, I think it is simply that he saw a child, abandoned and alone, and in the midst of war he could not let such a thing stand.” She drew back, just a little; though he was full grown, the gesture was that of a treasured childhood. And Frigga smiled, sad. “But then, perhaps, he had wanted a Jötunn child of his own. Bestla had Jötunn blood in her, and he did not like that she was looked down for it. But after the war, Laufey had made it very hard for Asgard to see Jötunheimr as anything but a realm of savages.”

“So shall we blame Laufey for these ills, then?” Her fingers were very strong on his chin, not allowing him to move his eyes elsewhere. And he smiled, tremulous. “I thought you were trying to teach me responsibility and self-awareness.”

“Once, you might have asked Laufey for his reasoning.” And she sighed, her hand moving down to cradle his neck. “That path is no longer open to you.”

The quiet sorrow of it, the disappointment: both felt to him as blades thrust deep into his heart. But Frigga was leaning back, smoothing out the rich embroidery of her gown over unseen knees. Golden thread twinkled amongst the green, spreading half-seen vines. Her face had turned deeply serious.

“There are countless other realities. They spread as the branches of Yggdrasil, moving in all directions.” And now she chuckled, her hands moving quicker over the rich fabric. “Thor might have been very different, otherwise.” At the sharp look Loki gave her, she all but rolled her eyes. “I once told him that he was lucky, to have had me as a mother. That it gave him advantage over Odin.” Her smile grew crooked. “But then, Odin also never had you for a brother.”

“Oh, what fun we might have had, in that case,” he said, cold, and Frigga shook her head.

“In another world, another life, you were his blood brother.” Something in him shifted then, like a restless serpent uncoiling from a long sleep about his deepest unseen thoughts. “But it matters not, in the end. This is your reality. Thor is your brother. Odin is your father.”

“And you are my mother.”

She nodded. But if she went on, it was because she knew it was not about her any longer. The hollow misery of it felt to Loki to be the most unjust of matters: that someone so vital and true could now only watch the world move on without her.

But here, and now, her touch was upon his skin and she was his again. “No matter the configuration, you would always have met Thor. You were made to be opposites.” Those eyes, just like her son’s, blazed bright; her seiðr had always been a constant gleam beneath her skin, all warmth and banked embers that could so easily burst to bright flame. And she laughed. “Yet you are complementary. You do not cancel one another out, no matter what you might believe of shadows in the sun. You are perfect synergy.”

“And so I have no choice at all.” He spoke flat, drear and dull, even as his heart rabbit-skipped into thunderous rhythm. “He is my fate.”

“Your choice is in how you shift that fate to fit your soul,” she corrected. “In the end, that is all I need tell you.”

Loki had never taken as well to teaching as others might have believed. Certainly he seemed the better scholar than Thor, able to sit still for more than one lecture at a time, seeking out knowledge beyond what was scheduled. But then, he’d only learned what suited his mind best. So many other things had slid right by him, and Frigga’s hand was sure where she laid it on his hand now and challenged a thousand years.

“When you make your choices, Loki, dwell not on the miseries they might bring others. Look instead to the contentment you might instead bring to your own heart.”

When he spoke, it was the trembling voice of a child. “I do not know how to be content.”

“I held you in my arms as but a babe,” she whispered, true and easy. “I never saw a child sleep so sound, so safe.” It was a promise he would have given anything to believe when she kissed his forehead, whispered against cursed lines: “You _can_ know happiness, Loki.”

“I was ignorant then.”

She shook her head. “You were trusting.”

“Because I didn’t know any better!”

“Knowledge is not always conducive to happiness, no,” she said, and when she learned close he could scent her ever-fragrance of lilies and light. “But it _can_ remind you of what once did.” Her eyes had turned searching again, dark. “This no boyhood game between brothers, Loki. It is berserker elemental and seiðmaðr warrior against a Titan. You made your deals with Odin not for his approval, but for Thor himself. Because you know this is a battle from which there is no retreat, and that should you have only one ally at your side it would be the one who had always been there.”

Loki stared at his shaking hands, half-choked on words he did not even need to say aloud. “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” he whispered, and her hands bound up his together, pressing so hard it hurt.

“No. Not yet.” And when he looked up, her sadness was as palpable as it was inevitable. “Our time grows short.”

“No. _No_.”

“You know the shape of your happiness, Loki.” And she was now disentangling their hands, her expression the agony of childbirth: short pain, for such pleasure. “You will fit yourself to it, in time. It is not as if it is even hidden very well. And it is always looking for you.”

His laughter was more sob. “Mama.” He reached blindly for her, held her hand so tight it ought to have broken every delicate bone within. “Mama, if you were here…”

“My son.” She could hear her smile, as lopsided and lovely as the one she would pass on to the son of her blood. “Loki. I am always here.”

And her hand in his was moving backward, soft and sure. Then it was pressed over his heart, as real as his heartbeat even though he could already feel its fading.

He held all the tighter. “Don’t go.” And he was laughing even through his tears, warmed by her even as the coolness of her absence began to seep back into his heart. “Are you happy? Are you well? Are you…are you safe?”

When he looked to where she had been, half-blinded still by tears, he fancied he could see still her smile: left behind, upon the air. Then he cursed himself for a fool thought. Frigga was now beyond the mortal games of safety, murdered in her own home while her sons and husband stood idly by. He bowed his head into the darkness, hands cold about the bowl and the knife. It was no different when he closed his eyes. The hollow of his heart never changed.

 

*****

 

“So you’ve lived here all your life, and never come to the orchard?”

Thor seemed troubled, but for no specific reason Loki could name. But then, he had said nothing about how Loki had not come to him in the night. Now he walked beside Jane, his crimson cloak like a shiver of flame upon the air. “No-one comes here,” he said, flat, and the mortal only grew more perplexed.

“Not even the Allfather?”

“Iðunn’s apples are her own.”

She turned this thought over in her mind for but a scarce second. “You guys can really be so damn _weird_ sometimes.”

“I will not deny it.”

This time the mortal woman gave him an amused look which Loki pretended he did not see. Though Sullt and Hungr had been returned to the vault beneath Glaðsheimr, he could still feel the weight of them in his hands.

_And the scent of her hair—_

“At least we’re probably not going to be eaten alive by wolves in here,” Jane said, and though it had not seemed forced in its cheerfulness, the lack of immediate response had her shooting Thor a sharp look. “…we’re not, are we?”

The chuckle that rolled about low in his throat felt to Loki as a shiver of lightning tripping lightly down his spine. “I would not think so,” he replied, the blue of his eyes too light indeed in his fondness. She nodded with grim pleasure.

“Good. Because, you know, I’d like to be able to publish my own results. It might be a bit Cecilia Payne otherwise…I make all the important inferences, do all the legwork, then Erik publishes it after I get digested on another planet and everyone forgets the name Jane Foster.”

Loki gave her an odd look. “A curious scenario,” he murmured, and her snort was most unladylike.

“Not if you’ve ever been a female PhD candidate, it isn’t.”

She had no more heed to spare for him, short legs working hard instead to keep pace with Thor’s far longer stride. Despite the height disparity she moved too easily at his side. It seemed almost a surprise that when he glanced downwards to find that their hands were not linked. Jealousy swelled all the same, tasting of bright and bloodied wine upon his tongue.

The pathway ahead, cool and shadowed beneath the avenue of trees, provided something of a distraction. Few had ever tried to enter the orchard. From the look of shock upon the mortal woman’s face, she had thought it would be more difficult to do so. But Loki reached forward, flipped up the latch on the wooden stock-gate, and raised an eyebrow.

“Yes?”

The spectacle she made of composing herself might have been darkly humorous, under any other circumstance. “This…this isn’t it. Is it.”

Thor gave her a half hug, rough enough that Jane made a most undignified squeak. “Iðunn is a woman of simple tastes,” he said, with an almost fond look at the simple thing; Loki felt his face heat up, hands already curling about seiðr he dare not summon.

“I am not certain you could say that of any who possess an infinity stone, Thor.”

“I am not certain you could ever be capable of not making something more complicated than it needs to be.” When Loki’s mouth twisted into a scowl, the fool actually _winked_ at him. He then did not even walk through the gate; instead, with one hand to steady his weight upon the crossbeam, Thor nimbly leapt the fence instead.

Even while Jane clapped, Loki ignored his theatrics and flowed past them both to the continuation of the path beyond. He did not bother to close the gate; there were few who could hope to walk in the footsteps of those such as themselves. The spring sun tucked itself away here, a muted green light filtered through the spreading canopy. Some branches held new blossoms already, but it was far too early in the season for fruit.

“It _is_ beautiful.”

Loki did not even realise he had spoken aloud until the familiar warmth of Thor’s hand closed itself within his. He turned, sharp, but Thor’s gaze had fixed itself ahead in rapt curiosity. Loki did not pull away. In this they were as the children they had not been in centuries: wide-eyed, walking together, seeking new life, tumbling into fresh adventure.

“I cannot believe we never snuck in here,” Thor said, sudden, and laughed like low thunder. And when Loki made to draw back his hand, his fingers dug deep into the tender flesh of his narrow wrists.

“I can,” he muttered, yanked harder. Only then did he look to the shadowed path branching off to their left. “Hello, Iðunn.”

Jane pulled up short, gasped in a manner that made it wholly obvious that she had not been born of Asgard. Ignoring the voice that whispered that neither had he been, Loki folded his hands before his hips, bowed his head before this one who walked so silent in her shadows.

“My lady of the orchards.”

“Loki.” So lovely might she have been, in her youth: her skin had withered now, folding in upon itself, gone coarse and rough like the shell of a walnut. Yet the small body seemed weightless as she moved forward, the wispy remnants of her white hair yellowing in what little sun remained. Her hand was bird-like, delicate, where she rested it upon his arm. But her too-bright eyes held no age, and might have stepped back if he did not feel even so wizened a grip holding him still.

“I know why you are come.”

Thor’s surprise cut through the tense dimness like summer daybreak. “I did not think foresight to be one of your gifts.”

“No.” And she smiled. It might have been pretty, once – though it was not age that had stolen her beauty. “Suffice it to say that Heimdall is a gift to many, and not just his future monarchs.”

The urge to laugh very loudly at the poleaxed expression upon his brother’s broad features hit Loki hard enough he almost gave into it. Instead he looked closer to the lady of the orchards. Her eyes really were too blue. “What is his role in this?”

“Why, he is a gatekeeper. It is his role to protect Asgard.” There was no smile now as she turned back to the path Loki would never have seen, had she not been standing there. “Come with me.”

In the odd silence that followed, not even Loki stirred himself to movement. Iðunn turned back, gnarled lips pursed and the scowl cutting deeper furrows into her ruined features.

“And you could not have ever snuck into my deep orchard,” she said, sudden. “I am not the seiðkona your mother was, but my wards have strength enough of their own.”

Thor’s own brow furrowed, and though Mjölnir remained quiescent where she was strapped to his hip, Loki recognised the way his grip opened, closed, though it was on nothing but air. Yet it was Jane who spoke.

“So you’re letting us in here because you want to help Heimdall?” she asked, and one hand swiped back through the hair that had fallen into the questioning oval of her face. “Because you want to protect Asgard?”

“When you are as old as I, motivations do become so much more complicated.” When she smiled again, it was no kind thing. “But never fear, Dr. Foster. You will have your taste of time as I have known it.”

While Jane took half a startled step backward, Thor took two forward. Loki only shook his head, voice low. “She is not the one who started this.”

“Oh, I know how this all began, Loki.” And she turned, leading the way into darkness once more. Her voice floated back to them like birdsong in a haunted wood. “I know such matters better than any.”

The three of them stayed close together, though Thor made no particular effort to take his hand again. Loki might have sneered at it, asked if he was too self-conscious now that his mortal paramour was forced all but up in his face by the close quarters. Then he saw where the great hand rested by Mjölnir’s haft and his mouth kept his thoughts trapped well enough inside.

The stop came sudden. Much as he’d not been startled by how simple the orchard’s fences had been, this was stranger yet.

Alone in the clearing stood a very small tree. It could be called almost stunted: instead of branching outwards and upwards, it rather twisted in upon itself. A small and bitter plant, it withered lonely beneath the spreading branches of the healthy stock about it.

“It bears only one fruit a season.” Iðunn’s words were flat. “I eat it alone.”

Jane stared, her gaze both ravenous and disbelieving. “I… _this_ is an infinity stone?”

“It is as I wished it to be.” The searching look she gave the mortal was unkind; even Loki felt the urge to step between that ugly hunger and Jane’s fragile human body. “Their forms are fluid, or so I understand it,” Iðunn went on, and then laughed, dry and crackling. “I only have long experience of one.”

Her throat worked. “I…so how do we revert it? Or…sublimate it, maybe?” Now Jane’s gaze shifted to the tree and its one terrible small fruit. “Because…you _are_ giving it to us, right?”

“You speak as if it were a gift.”

“Well—”

“It is a curse.” The axe appeared in her thin hands as if from nowhere. Even Thor flinched away from the way she swung it backward, as certain and sure in her trajectory as he might ever have been with Mjölnir. One, two, three strikes: and the tree came down with no sound at all. With only a stump remaining in the ground it made a pathetic sight. Curled upon the dirt like a root wrenched above the earth, the dead tree lay withered and wrong in the sunlight when it should have always been buried deep in the loam beneath.

She bent forward from the waist, smooth and graceful despite the age she carried in her shoulders, all the way down her spine. Another blow of the axe, and the single apple upon the tree rolled free. It fit snug into the palm of her hand, as if grown to be there. Or merely grown there. Loki shuddered, even when she turned, held it out to him like a cup of wine at some grand ball.

“Brother—”

Loki stepped forward, dipped a courtly bow that would have made even Fandral look like a country boor. “My lady Iðunn. I thank you for your sacrifice.”

Thor’s eyes watched him very carefully as he accepted the apple from Iðunn, and then strayed again to the fallen tree. Iðunn followed his worried gaze, snorted lightly. “It is no hardship. It’s hardly even a shock. I chose this long ago.” When she folded her arms over her near-flat chest, her face was as grey weathered stone. “It had not even blossomed this spring. This is last season’s fruit. It knew already what was to come – for even the strongest of loves will wither when only one cares to tend it.”

“Wait.” Jane’s voice had turned very high, uncertain. “If you don’t eat the apple—”

“Death finds us all, in time.” Those too-blue eyes, with that maddened light, fixed upon Loki alone. “Perhaps you ought to tell your mad Titan that. Though maybe that is just what he wants.”

“Iðunn.” Thor’s earnestness had begun to war with something very close to panic, though his great hands remained steady where they reached out for her. “Iðunn, I will not be resp—”

“Oh, stop it.” He reared back as if she’d slapped him, even though he was at least three times her mass. But her blue eyes were furious, arms akimbo and fingers digging deep into the bones of her fleshless hips. “Know this, Odinson: one cannot force love. And if there is to be any sort of miracle for Iðunn and Bragi now, it cannot come from _me_.” Jane had gone very still at his side, but Thor could only stare at Iðunn. Her smile twisted, an apple branch grafted to another cultivar that would not take. “This all rests in _his_ hands now, unworthy as they might be.”

Only when she turned on her heel did Loki realised that she wore no shoes. But then it didn’t matter. His own feet were as rooted to the damp ground beneath, the wind an uncertain whisper in the weave of branch and leaf overhead. The gift he held between his hands surely would not last long, seeing as he felt so very, very cold.

“…that was too weird.” The bravado in her voice did not go far, and yet Jane still stepped forward, one small hand rising uncertainly. She stopped long before she reached Loki himself. “Is that really the time stone? It looks nothing like any of the others.”

Loki turned it over. A small apple, it was nothing like the swollen fruit given at harvest, their bright red skin highlighted golden in the long autumn sun. With every movement he could hear the rattle of dried seeds within. He didn’t shield his grimace. It would taste of tart winter, cold and unforgiving.

“Loki?”

“Yes, Thor?”

“Give me the apple.”

The voice came to him as if from another realm, distorted and distant. Loki did not precisely care. Not even the concern it in could raise his eyes from the thing, cradled as it was between his two blue palms. “In a moment. I just…”

Two hands. Two halves. It should not have been so easy to do, but when he tightened his palms about the two hemispheres and twisted, it pulled apart as if meant to split into such pieces. From the little dried hollows near the centre of its withering flesh, three apple seeds fell into in his cupped hand. Already he could taste bitter almond upon his tongue.

“So what, it’s the seeds?” The mortal’s pretty little face twisted as he raised one, silhouetted against what little light broke through the canopy overhead. “Look, if you want my help on this, Loki, you need to give me something to work with here—”

It was between his teeth before Thor could move. Loki had bitten down even before his brother could shout a warning. He still heard it, even after he was gone; the sound warped as he felt the world receding, something trapped between a scream and a whisper. Or perhaps it was a whisper chased by a scream, already going distant and strange. And the world kept slipping ever away from him, like a tumble from a bridge, a fall through eternity.

The time gem trembled between his teeth, and in his mind he sighed. He hadn’t known he would let go on the bridge until he began to fall; he hadn’t realised why he’d taken the seed into himself until he tasted the threads of his own existence. Oddly, it seemed so much easier, this way: to unravel his deeds, and with them all his regrets. Because everything passed on the tapestry of time, one event fading into the next but forever tethered to what came before and after. Time was the warp and their actions were the weft, a single strand of thread tangling their lives together until death choked it out.

But here, he might reach out to the loom himself. Frigga had never taught him this trick, but he’d watched her weave often enough. A pick, and a tug, and: he could feel it coming free, this thread of his life. And once the anchor was gone, how easy it became, to undo it all. The villain, the victim, the criminal, the child. No son, no brother; no friend and no foe. He could hear a voice in the distance, again like a scream, but it didn’t seem to matter. He was very, very cold. He was but a babe on the ice, one bloodied hand reaching for him while the other wrapped about mighty Gungnir. For the first time Loki understood how close to death it had been, that desperate infant. Why it had latched on to the only affection it had known in its short life, skin turning from blue to Aesir-pink, an uncertain smile to break an unknowing heart.

One last tug and the child’s heartbeat stuttered away. His life hung in ragged pieces. The thread was cut. He smiled. Time did grant all wishes, in the end.

_What do you wish for?_

“I wish I had never been born.”

With those words, he let everything be undone – and with the thread of his very existence excised and tossed aside, Loki himself was nothing, and no more.


	15. 3.3: Spagyric

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...er, let's just call this "emotional exposition" and never speak of it again, yeah? D:

_Why am I still here?_

As a thought in the darkness, it seemed dreadfully unfair: Loki as once was had been utterly unmade, and yet his damned mind still went onwards. But then it always had been too active for its own good. Even with body and life and _soul_ undone, it ran undeterred upon the fuel of its own destructive thoughts alone.

_But it only erodes: it never eradicates_.

That thought struck him as odd; not quite his own, but neither had it been spoken in the voice of another. This darkness cloaked him in silence, otherwise, and when he opened his eyes he knew only the same. But his mind could be crueller yet. Even with nothing left to it but regret and revenge, it still fooled itself into believing it had substance. He was nothing and he was nowhere, and yet he could flex his fingers, draw his knees beneath him, rise from his back to his knees to his trembling feet.

The darkness was absolute and yet it still held him up. His bitter laughter echoed off walls unseen and unstanding. “Will the Norns never cease their mockery of Loki?”

“You cannot blame them for this one, I’m afraid.”

The shock of it whipped him around, hands reaching into clothes that should not have existed for daggers that were not there. The footsteps approached anyway, and they made hardly any sound upon the strange ground beneath him – it was not organic, nor was it any mineral or element he could recognise. It was also near impossible to catch sight of the owner of the voice, though he noticed the darkness was no longer absolute: a rising glow came to him from a distant space. He frowned, but he could not make out any source, not at such far remove.

Returning his attention to the voice was a far more pressing concern. Though it had been as if she had spoken beside him, there was no air here to carry sound. And it seemed a long time before she drew close enough to see, the light that moved with her now just enough to make out her expression, the gravity of her expression.

She cut only a small figure in this brooding odd almost-darkness, and it suited her utterly: she always had been lovely and terrible both. But Loki had known her already by the touch of her magics. Faint and soft they had been in the beginning, they were always terribly strong: like bone beneath crumbling flesh, returning only last to ash and to dust.

“Hela.”

“Loki.”

It had not been intended, but he took a step back all the same. Her head tilted, something like pity flaring in her one seeing eye, and his hands clenched to fists. “If I never existed to make the deal in the first place, then it could not have existed itself,” he said, slow and deliberate, both to make his meaning clear and to mask the tremor beneath it. “I owe you no further debt, Lady of Helheimr.”

“And yet, here we are.” Her smile should have been beautiful, and was only all the worse for the fact it moved only half of her childish face; the rest remained a heat-scarred ruin, locked in permanent grimace. Still she came for him, and Loki took another step backward. This one he did all wrong; one foot tangled about the other, and he went down hard, just catching a cry before it escaped. His fingers burned where they’d twisted under what should have been an impossible weight, and when he straightened them, he bit back a shriek. Bruised, but not broken. They should have been neither.

At his side now, Hela hunkered down on her knees. The little-girl dress bunched in her lap, her one good eye thoughtful as she pursed her lips at this, the fallen prince of nowhere.

“If I do not exist,” he hissed, through teeth clenched and aching, “I cannot pay you your price.”

She blinked. “But you clearly do still exist. Otherwise you would not be here.”

First he closed his eyes. Then he opened them. But even now he had not faded away. Hela still stared at him. Jaw working, Loki bit down upon the pain and spread his fingers wide, tilted his palms upward. His empty hands held nothing: no bowl, no knife, no apple.

_Mama, I am sorry_.

His voice might as well have been a child’s – but then, truly, in this place he should have no age. Time had no power over him. And yet… “Did I do it wrong?”

“That is a loaded question.” Hela shifted, came to sit upon the unseen ground with her skirts spread about her like cradling petals. Her smile had faltered, but only a little. “And it is one that has many answers, I should think.”

He could pound his fists into the not-ground until they bled unreal blood, could then bash his head against the same until his pulverised mind finally quietened. He did neither. But while he smiled, it might as well have been a scream for all its edges and agony. “That infinity stone gave me access to time itself. I removed myself from the weave. Why am I still here?” His aching hand pressed suddenly to his chest, to the place where he could feel the ghost of a Dökkálfar blade passed through. Pain flared, and he grimaced – but it had hurt more, to wake alone, than to die in his brother’s arms.

_And you are the one who woke me._

“Are you really so desperate for your payment that you would interfere with the fabric of reality itself?”

“Be sensible, Loki.” Though she spoke with the command of a queen, it was kindly given. She even reached between them, patted his knee; the bones of her hand rattled together like wooden chimes, her single eye pitying. “You would need the reality stone for such an endeavour, and you do not have it yet.”

“ _Yet_.” Loki threw his head back, but the hysterical laughter that boiled and bubbled in his too-full throat came out only as a bark. “With me gone, there is no need for Thor to collect them. It no longer matters – at least, not to him.”

“Ah, but it does.” Hela crossed her legs now, tailor-style beneath her lacy dress. But if her appearance disguised her age, it burned in her eye, and right through him. “You say you undid your own weave. But what if your soul was yet tied to another’s?”

The whisper held all the force of approaching avalanche – one that was still coming. “Thor.”

This smile managed to be both beatific and mournful. “ _Thor_.”

That gleam in the distance had grown brighter, and he turned to it so easily – had been turning towards it all the time, without ever quite realising it. The wound ached with the movement, as if Malekith’s lieutenant had again skewered him upon his own weapon. It had been gone when he had awoken. There had been no scar. But his life had been no gift from Hela. She had debts she wished to collect upon.

The light moved like warm tendrils over his skin, when he turned his face to follow it. But it hurt to look, even at such distance. It would burn his Jötunn eyes from his cursed skull – because when he looked down, even here, even in the dark, he was not _Ása_ _-_ _Loki_ , but the Jötunn foundling who had torn the Asgardian royal family in two. He turned away. His shadow rose before him, cast itself long over Hela.

“He searches for you.”

The words were unnecessary. And they hurt. “But if I never existed in the first place, then how can he even remember me?” he said, all frustration edged with fear. And she, curse her, she only _laughed_.

“How could he forget?”

It was a question he already knew the answer to. He just preferred to pretend he did not. “Then why are you here?”

“Ah.” Now she wore a smile entirely too old for her childish features. “This is why one does not make bargains with those called soul collectors.”

Though a new fear entirely hit him strongest, but it was only the fury that he would show her. “You cannot have him.”

The coldness of his words struck her not at all, but then perhaps it had no weight from a Jötunn mouth. “Ah, but we made ourselves a deal, did we not?” she mused, and he shook his head.

“Not for _this_.” His hands clenched to fists. “Not for his _soul_.”

“I told you I wished to know more your brother.” A coquette’s dip of eyelashes, and then she gave a peal of laughter. “You promised me a meeting, did you not?”

“You _have_ met him.”

“And how can one meet him but once, and have it be enough?” Softly she spoke now, reverent as the pitter-patter of spring rain upon the first buds of the young season. “Do not disseminate, Loki, or attempt to use trickery and lie to remove yourself from this debt.” And now he could hear the hardening ice beneath her words. “It stretches across time and death. You must pay me what you owe.”

“Then it never will be paid.” He smiled, but did not know it; both tongue and lips were utterly numb. “A soul cannot be given by any but the one it belongs to.”

The eyebrow she raised was the ruined one – how the hairless broken brow suited the sorrow and amusement upon her face. The coiled fear low in his gut stirred, a serpent wakened to groggy awareness, fangs already descending for a fatal strike.

“No.” His hands skittered over the blackness, found no purchase. “ _No_ , I will not do it!”

“But you promised,” she said, walking some impossible tightrope between imploring and demanding, leaning forward so that her golden hair fell over one thin shoulder, glittering like broken glass in the growing light. “And did I not make good on _my_ promise? Did you not use my bowl and my knife to split the veil between life and death and see again the only woman you’ve ever treated with the respect they all deserve?”

He blinked against the hot burning of his eyes; the light crimson sheen his Jötunn form cast over the world seemed almost to pulse with the fierce raising of heartbeat. “That is not why I asked them of you.”

“No. No, it was not.” Mocking now, the voice of a little girl of privilege, sitting in her rocking chair looking down upon the urchins in the gutters. Her laughter was high, tinkling, beautiful. “Oh, here he is, our dear Loki: never quite fitting into the world that called him prince, always seeking other places that might recognise him better for what he was. Places where he walked not always in shadow. Places with different suns. Places without golden princes.” All pretence dropped then: when she leaned close, on hands and knees, her face driven up close to his, she was as a wild animal on the verge of attack. “And you never found it, did you?”

He leaned back, lips twisted, heart beating too fast – both in fear and in fury. “There was not _time_!”

She snarled – and then, she drew back, the beast falling back behind the mask of a little half-dead girl. “Oh, there was always time enough,” she snapped; a moment later she flicked the fingers of her whole hand, as if shaking away invisible water droplets. The look she gave him was revolted. “But then it is hard to open the way into paradise if one does not believe it exists.”

His fingers flexed. “Let me go.”

She blinked. Then she threw her hand into the air, exasperated. “You speak as though _I_ am the one holding you here!”

The whisper rocked through him. “He is a fool.”

“And yet still he comes.”

Loki let his head fall forward, as if his neck had snapped in the madman’s noose. “If it is his fate to be taken from the worlds for the whims of a queen of the dead, then I wish with all that remains of me that he never arrives.”

“Strangely unselfish, for Loki Liesmith.”

Shifting his weight, one hand aching yet, Loki managed a very nearly derisive snort. “If I cannot have him then no one will.”

“Ah. Much better.” And she turned from him, towards the light. “But still you do not understand!”

Watching her, he longed only to do the same: much as he feared what would become of Thor when he stood before Hela, Loki could not stem the longing for his approach. It was as a king tide summoned by the faithless, ever changing moon: and with it came the power to overwhelm, to drown.

He had sought the bowl and knife because of the legend around its origin: if it were truly the infinity stone of the soul, then it not only allowed the living to commune with the dead: it opened the way to worlds of pure paradise, those even beyond realms such as Valhalla. In such places neither life nor death mattered. One could be both, and neither. In such places, a soul became divine. Transcendent.

They were gone from his hands now – his damned hands, hateful in their Jötunn colour and ridge. Even before his fall to the Void, Loki had never believed in such a place. But for one who slipped between the realms like a dust mote dancing upon the air, it had been too fascinating an artefact to deny.

Hela snorted now, light and girlish, summoning him back. “You think too much, Loki.”

His head whipped about so fast that his hair stung against cheek and eye, but such was no concern of a warrior called to battle. “And if _you_ think I will surrender him to you—”

“You know what it is. To stand in shadow. To long for the light. The golden touch of precious Asgard.”

“Oh, are we playing the pity card, now?” Loki raised empty open palms, lips pulled back in a sneer. “Because my hand is better – _look_ at it. The runt stolen from a world that had already rejected him, never truly accepted by the next even when they knew not the lie of his existence. Fallen from grace more times than he can remember and even when he tries his best to remove himself, he remains yet – and all for want of a wager’s payment.”

Hela’s ruined features held the stillness of a statue upon an altar, an idol prayed to as if its god would ever deign to descend from her divine throne to offer her aid. “If I had the power to allow you to leave without his company,” she said, very cold, “would you?”

She scarce looked at him, though; as if repelled she turned from him as soon as she had spoken. Loki could not help follow her gaze, as if magnetised. The distant light grew as sure and strong as the churn in his stomach. “Damn you,” and his tongue tripped over his thickened voice, clumsy and choked. “Damn you, damn the Norns, damn the Allfather – and damn _him_ too.”

“And what of Loki?” Her smile had turned hungry, devouring. “Shall you damn him the most?”

“Am I not already?”

She smiled, again. But she was losing interest in him, and he could not blame her. The approaching light was the rising of a chaos sun – a storm made of heat and light and desperation. Loki did not understand how this could happen, either through Hela’s bindings or the time stone itself. But he understood Thor was coming. For him. That was all that mattered, now.

His fingers clenched about the nothingness that held them aloft. “I will kill you to keep him safe,” he whispered, fierce and agonised. Hela’s curls moved with the shake of her shoulders; again, she only laughed at his dilemma.

“I already exist between life and death. How might you achieve this?”

There should have been no blades in his leathers – but then, there should have been no leathers, no _Loki_. And so he felt nothing but satisfaction when his fingers closed tight about familiar hilts, the whisper-laugh of withdrawn blades. “How about we find out?”

“Sheathe your weapons, Loki.” But there was no fear in her, and she did not look to see if he obeyed. Her face had been consumed instead by a wistful smile. In this light, it almost made her beautiful. She raised her face to it further, a sunflower seeking its namesake, and chuckled. “This is no place for combat.”

Golden light glinted from unsheathed silver. “Is it not?”

“Do not fight this,” she advised, “for you cannot win – but neither can you lose.” The bones of her fleshless hand moved through the curls of her hair, death and life obscenely married in this world of light and dark. She spoke with the wisdom of age in the voice of a child. “You cannot change a weave such as this. Not when it has already be woven so tight. So true.”

His own voice rasped, harsh and hurting. “You want my brother’s light.”

“And you knew it was not yours to give,” she said with sudden delight, a teacher congratulating a student thought doomed to failure. “Loki, you always knew that the bargain you made could never be kept. So why should you be so offended that I just used your insecurities and mistakes to get what I wanted?” But for all the harshness of it, rough and ragged against his bleeding heart, there was affection, too. “Ah, Loki. You are a fool.”

His jaw ached, his knuckles bleached almost to whiteness where they wrapped too tight about his dual hilts. “You cannot have him.”

“I know that.” One long phalange tapped the half-rosebud of her lips. “But then I also know you already knew it, too.”

The shiver could have been an earthquake, rupturing his heart and spilling everything of it through his clenched fists. “Hela—”

Her only eye remained closed. “Our bargain is ended, Loki. _This_ is all I wanted, when I bound your soul. To watch him come for you.” She paused, drew a deep breath fit to fill her little-girl chest, let it go. “To know how it feels to be loved by the heart of the storm himself.”

Though his eyes remained dry, he could feel the rending tear of something deep in his abdomen, as if some part of him sobbed itself to destruction. “You want to know how it feels? It _feels_ like I am being consumed alive. _Burned_ alive!” He laughed, wild and feral, felt ice dancing at his fingertips, crystallising light and dangerous over the smooth blades. “But it never ever burns out, this…this… _love_. This _light_.” He raised his hands, found them shaking, daggers vanished, a shimmering blue in the golden light. “It…Hela. Hela, it goes on forever.”

“Love.” And she sighed again, a sound now terribly close to orgasmic. “It has the unfortunate habit of doing that, I suppose.”

Upon his hands and knees, unable to stand, he moved to her. Queen of her Dead she might be, but still his hand closed on her small arm. It was fury, but in the end they both knew the truer taste of desperation.

“That love is _mine_.”

Opened her one good eye. “You believe I am the one who needs to be told such?” Though she smiled still, any brightness of it was shadowed heavy with a jealousy that had him reeling backwards. And she laughed; one side of her mouth filled with neat little white teeth, the other black and rotted. “I can feel it now, and it is beautiful.” When her eye locked on his, the helpless fury in it turned even his blood cold. “But it’s just an illusion, to me. I’m just watching you burn, knowing such flame will never take to my soul.”

“Norns, why won’t he ever let me go?”

Even as he held his aching head between his hands, as if he could compress it and every damned thought within to nothing more than dust, her hand closed over his wrist. The bones grated together, fleshless and cold. “It’s not his choice any more than it is yours,” she whispered; her expression was that of a child told a bedtime story, at last slipping away to dreams. “And oh, it is _beautiful_.”

Hela’s hand slipped free. It seemed odd, that while she disappeared as she did, the content smile lingered long after she had fallen into darkness, even as the sun seemed to swallow Loki whole in golden light.

 

*****

 

He couldn’t breathe. There was no way to catch his breath: there _was_ no air to breathe, even if he’d still had lungs to take in said air with. Still he struggled, with as much thought to what would happen after as a rat gnawing off a leg to escape a trap. But the bands about him seemed to grow ever tighter. Panic began to curl sharpened nails around his heart, sending out sharp shocks with every stuttering beat. That, if nothing else, convinced him that he was alive after all. But it would not last long.

Even as he struggled, his entire body arching as if electrified, he caught a sense of familiarity: the scent of raw ozone, underlain with something earthier, denser. Pulling back, raising up his arms, crossing them before his chest, he thrust his head back, gasped in breath. Still he was barely able to force the words out. “Thor!” And he threw his muscles into spasm again, for all the grip around his middle felt to be splitting him in two. “Thor, let _go_ , damn you!”

The reply was muffled by where the face pressed against his chest, low and unyielding. “Never.”

For the first time Loki struck out; the stinging blow across one ear yielded still no reaction. “I’m not _going_ anywhere!”

“No. You are not.”

“I cannot _breathe_.”

The earned him a reluctant loosening, but Thor did not release him entirely. Still it gave him no time to take in their surroundings, not when Thor’s eyes, dark and wet, were fit to fill the world.

“Loki,” he whispered, and said no more. It was enough: words had never been his truest strength, but there was a realm of them in those eyes. And his arms tightened again, the muscles so taut Loki could almost feel the ache of them in his own, and sighed. He closed his eyes.

“Thor.”

In the quiet that followed Loki could feel the worlds swimming back into focus all around him. They twisted with Thor at its centre, but for the first time in what seemed centuries the sharp stab of expected resentment did not follow. It had become something closer to relief. Though he did not open his eyes, Loki could feel that they lay tangled together upon the ground. It was a certain uncomfortable realisation; a reminder of the last time he had died in his brother’s arms. But he did not lie down this time. Loki instead moved upward, felt Thor yield just enough so that he could blink against the light and see exactly where they were.

Recognition came quick, and easy: his brother’s chambers. But with the memory of Hela’s smile, of a dead girl’s hand upon his face, it all had turned familiar and strange all at once. He licked dry lips, touched his fingers to the cracks he found there.

“How…did we get here?”

“Mjölnir.” Then, unnecessarily: “We flew.”

The next words were a tangle of irritation and disgust and – and, gratefulness. Still Loki levered himself fully upward with difficulty, every muscle crying out as if reborn. “You _carried_ me.” Before Thor could grab him again he shifted, pulled one foot underneath him as if to rise. “Where is your mortal?”

“Loki, what—”

“No, where _is_ she, we still need—”

“ _Loki_!” The shout rattled about the room like misguided storm, seeking a sky in which to break. Loki’s foot gave way, and he came down heavy on his behind. But all he could see was Thor, who loomed before him like stormclouds blotting out the sky entire.

And his eyes were very, very wet. “Loki,” he said, again, as if bringing him alive with every repetition of the word, “Loki, you undid time.”

“I…well, yes.”

This time Thor sat down hard. Like a child he drew up his knees, elbows resting there as he cradled his head between his hands. At first, Loki could hear only ragged breathing. Then, it was silent.

Only moments ago, he had fought to be free of Thor’s arms. Now, he wanted nothing more to be crushed by them again. His fingers only dug bloodied crescents of his palms. “How did you even _know_?”

“I am not half the fool you call me.” When he looked up, his eyes were dry but his face still bore the scars of earlier misery. “Loki. I know what you did.”

The fireplace stood empty: no blaze, no wood, no heat. Loki stared at it, unmoving. As if in a dream, as if commanded by mere thought alone, Thor stood. Even in his grief he remained a creature of strange grace. But then he’d always been so. He fitted the body he had been gifted perfectly. It could therefore be no wonder at all that it moved so in tune with the song of the soul inside of it.

There were servants for such. Still Thor had built tens of thousands of fires with his own callused hands – in houses and in forests alike. Thor’s fingers moved easy about the task, though Loki could not miss the way they trembled when it came to the scattering of the herbs. Warmth flooded even his Jötunn skin as the fire caught, held, but it was the scent of Frigga’s gift that closed his eyes to comfort.

“Stay.”

Loki opened them again, found Thor knelt at his side. He blinked once, twice, then coughed. “I need…I need water. I will…I’ll get it from the bathchamber.”

“I shall bring it to you.”

Frustration bubbled up in him, but he barely had the strength to stand, let alone run. “You fool, I need the necessary.”

“Then I shall bring you there.”

Thor was as good as his word, helping him rise, acting as a support once they were both risen. It chafed at him like salt in a wound. “You _could_ let me stand on my own.”

“I could,” Thor said, peaceably. “But you do not have to.”

“A noble sentiment. I can still do it.”

“I know.”

With a sigh Loki allowed his brother to aid him. Together they moved to the little room branching from an umbilical corridor; going further down it would lead to the bathchamber shared with the suite of haunted rooms that had been his own. Loki turned away from there, and slipped inside the smaller in silence.

Alone he might have been at last, but Thor was not far. Even with the door closed between them Loki could hear him breathing. Closing his eyes yet again, Loki leaned his forehead against the cool of the looking-glass. He did not need to open his eyes to hate what he would see there. All he needed was a minute. Or more. Just enough.

But Loki also knew that no matter the locks or wards upon this chamber, should he stay too long Thor would smash the door into splinters. He could not be blamed for it: there would be a need, no matter how unfair. Loki did not drive him to it. Instead he pushed back his hair, hating how the moisture curled it into chaos. Then, he pushed open the door.

Thor awaited him on the other side – always, on the other side. But he came to him without second thought. No hands on him this time. But he kept close at his brother’s side, his step stuttering in time with Loki’s own, tired and strange.

Only when they were back in the bedchamber did he speak. But not until they were upon the bed, Loki against the headboard, Thor seated upon the edge with hands between his knees.

“Why would you leave me again?”

“I…” There were so many things he could have said, and all those things cutting and sharp, silver and cruel. Yet they all fell aside with the simple naked misery of Thor’s expression. Never had Loki seen him look quite like this: a lost child, unable to articulate the deep loss that had come so close to tearing his world all to pieces.

He turned his face away. Truth had never come easy to him; perhaps only as a very small child, one who had not yet learned the power of falsehood and lie. When he spoke, his voice coiled tight about itself, a high-strung spiral that had not left his throat since before childhood. “I’m sorry. I’m…I’m sorry. I don’t even know why I did it. I…I only…I just…”

Arms closed around him, but he felt no need to escape now. The warmth of that damp skin pressed him against his side, clumsy and sudden, but Loki could not complain. He also could not have caught his hitching breath even had his face not been inelegantly smushed into one of the roundels of his brother’s armour.

Thor tried then for soothing; his long finger moved over the tangle of Loki’s undone hair, caught in the strands like fat caterpillars. Loki should have winced when they were clumsily withdrawn. Instead he only sighed, burrowed closer as Thor’s words murmured against his temple. “Don’t say it. I know. I’ve always known. Just don’t say it. Not again. Not like this.”

Managing to move his face just enough to catch a little air, Loki promptly lost all of it on a derisive laugh. “I don’t know why you even worried,” he muttered, and his fingers twitched, blue and empty, in their tangle upon his lap. “No plan of mine ever goes the way it ought.”

This time Thor would not settle for only drawing Loki close. Instead his arms came up around him, pulling him into a full bodied embrace that would have seemed murderous in its strength, if not for the tenderness of the lips against his temple. Loki’s own arms came up beneath them, fingers wrapping about the bulging muscle of his upper arms, nails finding and digging deep into the hollows between them. He could feel every flex and hold, as solid as granite for all they were so brightly impossibly alive.

What came next was unspoken of, but their movements came as natural as those of a well-worn battle dance. Loki had been the first to draw back, but not far: just enough. Light fingers moved over buckles and lace, loosening and opening. Then, they moved onto shedding leather and heavy material.

Though his hands were not as graceful, his eyes red-rimmed and his fingers awkward, Thor’s laughter came like sun cutting through stormcloud. “This is not how I saw this happening,” he murmured, and Loki’s hands stumbled over the lacings of his brother’s mail. He swallowed hard, kept his eyes low, fixed on the golden skin revealed further with each passing moment.

“You _imagined_ this?”

Thor chuckled again, one hand capturing him about the jaw, raising his face so their eyes might meet. “I wanted it to be perfect. For you.”

He could have kept playing the cards that were disdain, boredom, frustration. And yet his body betrayed him, pressed close to Thor’s even as he lowered his face, only muttered his words. “I do not need gentle.”

“I know.” The undershirt fluttered away and Loki shivered, curved closer yet to the heat of Thor’s greater bulk. His breath fluttered over his collarbone, curled like a cat at the base of his throat, where his pulse leapt and stuttered. “What do you want from me?”

Loki closed his eyes. “Everything.”

That earned a laugh, wry and yet lovely in its simplicity. One hand moved about his jaw again, holding him so gentle. “You have always been so terribly greedy, little brother.”

Something should have been disturbing in that. And yet it only made his whole body shiver with sudden and sharp desire. And his own laughter rolled around his mouth, slipped as easy from his tongue as the words.

“But you have so much to offer me.” He skimmed his lips over the stubble of jaw, of cheek, revelled in the sandpaper drag. “And I would have it all.”

It felt as if he did, when they lay together at last, skin to skin. Lips never met lips, but they followed the trail of fingers as they moved over upward curve and teasing dip, breath stuttering and short.

“It is not enough.” Thor’s hands dug into the hollows cradling his spine, painful and demanding. “I need you, I need…”

Loki’s hands caught his face, and he gave a tight nod. Harsh exhaustion made every movement deliberate in design, but he could not turn away from his brother’s need, or from his own. Laid out upon the bed they became a curving tangle of limbs; then lips over a collarbone, then the bruising grasp on a hip. The hard muscle of a broad thigh drove up between his own, the wiry hair brushing over the soft skin of his prick, of his quim.

First Loki allowed a sigh, and then a smile. Then he bared his teeth over the quickening pulse beneath his lips. “You always have been given what you want. Do you really expect to have everything you need?”

“All I need is you.”

The weight of that responsibility choked back any mockery: it felt to be something like what had pursued him down into the darkness of the void. But the beat of Thor’s heart, a thunderous drum within the great warmth of his chest, reminded him of the path back home.

Thor had not been idle while Loki had paused that moment; a callused hand moved lazy and gentle where he gripped them together. Loki’s own fingers moved over the knot but briefly, revelling in the softness of skin over the hardness of rising cock. Drawing back a hitching breath, Loki leaned closer, face pressing into sweat and leather and thick hair. The richness of his brother never changed; in this he could breathe deep of memories both past and passing.

Further moments drifted away upon unseen currents, and so too Thor’s hand slipped away – but the oil he’d found left them both slick and needing. So easy it was to just keep moving against him, as if close to sleep but unable to cross that shadowed boundary between reality and dreaming. Loki closed his eyes, never knowing if he was smiling or crying. The taste of salt upon his lips might have been stolen from the leather worked into golden braids instead.

And still Thor moved against him in return. One hand now rested easy against his jaw, the blunt fingers a familiar weight upon his skin: one all of warmth and sun and starlight. The glide and roll of his own hips was too slow to come to any release, but then it might be better to stay forever upon this precipice: never falling, never rising, the two of them together at the centre of everything.

Yet the other hand was returning. Even as Loki’s cock ached anew, the anticipation of touch edging very close to pain, Thor pressed him back instead. There was no intent of separation: his bulk followed him like shadow chasing the sun. With Loki up against the headboard now, Thor rose upon his knees, thighs either side of Loki’s own. The hand that so wielded Mjölnir closed around his cock again. Loki shuddered to find it held fresh slickness, the scent rich musk.

Even as his hand worked anew Thor drew closer. When he rose, the hard muscle of his buttocks brushed over Loki’s thighs. There was not a chance that Loki might hold back the sharp breath as his cock found a slick pathway: so easy it slid easy along first the perineum, then the crease of his brother’s ass.

And of course Thor gave Loki no chance to speak. “I want you. Inside me.”

The shiver skipped down his spine, branched out to tremble along burning pathways to heart and hand and the thunderous shock of his uncomprehending mind. “What?”

Where his forehead pressed to his, sweat beaded like tears. “Without you, I was…empty.” Thor drew a shuddering breath, a laugh cracked by misery and a soldier’s realisation of war and death. “I still feel empty, even with you here.” Again, his hips moved; Loki hissed as cock again met hard muscle. “I _need_ you.”

“Thor.” A flatness of voice fed the rhetorical nature of his words, raggedly spoken as they were. “You have not done this before.”

“It does not matter.”

He might have laughed, had he not held their ruins both in this unexpected grasp. “It is not so easy.” Gritting his teeth did nothing to assuage the rising sensation as Thor’s hips rolled again. “I know you are forever the master of all that you tilt your hand to—”

“Loki.” Again, that damnable cupping of jaw, the searching blue of eyes too familiar even with pupils blown terribly void-wide. “This is not about competition, or victories,” he murmured; those same lips sketched a light kiss against one cheekbone. “I merely wish to hold you inside my body.”

Loki swallowed so hard he could scarcely breathe. Thor had always spoken of impossible things as if they were but unrealised realities. “It will hurt you.”

The lopsided smile burned like summer sun. “We have never shied away from pain, you and I.”

Loki had only silence to offer, even as his body moved always with the unspoken rhythm of Thor’s invitation. Not even he could ever deny that which was so very true. Yet in this his silver tongue could but serve him ill: this could be only motion and movement now, and Loki surrendered to both even as his brother’s body yielded to his own in return.

It left them together, sitting face to face. Thor’s chest hitched, his face slack as he sought to adjust to the heat inside of him. Loki remained very still, cock aching and hard where Thor continued to hold him so damn tight. Raised hands came to rest upon his cheeks, and then Thor was leaning forward. He curved about him like a nautilus about its centre, rigid and beautiful and true. Loki was the one inside, and yet he felt as though his brother pulled him forward and into himself, absorbing him, never letting him go.

The mineral-clear taste of his sweat tingled upon Loki’s tongue, stolen from skin. Strangely it tasted not at all of salt. It was as rain fallen from the skies, tracing through granite; beneath all, Loki could feel the tremor of lightning hidden within.

Thor shifted his weight, gave a soft sigh. In return Loki moved his hands, sought anchor: he found it in the corded power of those thighs, holding him between them, certain and forgiving. But he kept moving: back and over the smooth skin of his buttocks, lightly haired. There he found muscle stretched to break, eliciting a gasp, a stiffening of the spine. Loki smiled as his fingers brushed over his own cock, stroking soft in the place where they joined.

“ _Loki_.”

He was breathing hard now, sweat in rivulets from his temples, the loose golden hair darkened and damp. The scent of him was earthy and electric. Loki had never wanted so badly in his life.

Their eyes locked. The soft movement of them together came so easily: with foreheads pressed together, they could drink of one another’s breaths, light and gasping. His hand moved down, then about Thor’s cock. The slickness of the oil remained, but he gave but one or two tugs before he let go, dragging his palm over the dripping head. Loki had to know this: the taste of Thor on his lips, his fingertips, salty and simple. Then his hand dipped back down while lips grazed over a cheekbone, the harshness of his beard.

Thor turned his head, and their lips met in easy surrender. Every motion of it came naturally, as if it were but something that had been building since their first meeting when they’d both been too young to know of it. “Brother,” he murmured, and Loki knew power of it over him, over them both.

“ _Yes_.”

Thor lay now upon on his back: accepting him, taking him in, so very simple and easy in what was his greatest strength. From youngest memory Loki had never wanted to admit the size of Thor’s heart, for it would only mean acknowledging that Thor would always need more than just Loki himself inside to fill it. But then, a heart that encompassed worlds was the only one that could take Loki Liesmith for all that he was, had been, might ever be.

His brother. His damn fool brother, even now allowing him to pull back – but then he always drew him in once more. The tightness of Thor around him in this way was so new, so strange, but then just the same in that it held him so well and so strong Loki could scarce breathe. The welcome of him was no different. It was the same: the heat and strength and _light_.

It fell from his lips like tears, broken and despairing and hollow. “Why didn’t you let me go when you had the chance?”

“I saw you fall once. Then I saw you falling again. Falling through _time_.” The bed creaked beneath the upward curve of his weight, shoulders driving deep into the sheets as Thor planted his feet, tilted hips upward. “I reached for _you_.”

Trembling, Loki said nothing. But one hand curved like claws, an anchor of no strength compared to the man who held him now.

“I caught you,” Thor whispered, and his eyes were the colour of strange summer skies, inviting storm and song. “And now I’ll never let you go.”

Loki wanted to scream. Instead he drove deeper, heard his brother’s hissing groan, and closed his eyes too tight. His cheeks turned damp all the same. “You’re an idiot.”

“Loki.” Hips bucked, pulled him deeper still. “Loki, _please_.”

He should have been glad for it: the mighty Thor, begging on his back. But it meant nothing when accompanied by the slap of skin on skin, nails digging grooves as if casting rune-locked seiðr. Sweat tangled hair into the shadow of a warrior’s leathered braids and both of Thor’s palms cupped his ass now, drawing Loki ever deeper. Caught on sweat, one palm swerved inward; with the graze of fingertips over his own entrance, Loki’s hips jerked in sudden desperate spasm, pushed harder into a clenching heat.

Thor’s hands shot upward, to his waist, as if to steady him. It ruined what little rhythm he had left; while Thor was not quite stopping him, it slowed Loki somewhat. Thor had always been stronger, even as children; he could hold Loki still if he wanted, if it were only a physical competition. But there was something more to this: a quiet hesitation, a nervousness utterly at odds with Thor’s usual boisterous confidence.

His words, when they came, stuttered even where his hands were calm, simple. “Please. Just…stop. Just a moment.” And his palms flattened over his back, moving upward in pointed tandem as he drew Loki down. “Please, I…let me hold you.”

The pressure of it was not enough to force him. Still Loki sighed, gave over, lay his full weight upon his brother. Their ragged breathing was out of tune, nowhere near tandem, but it didn’t matter. Loki just buried in his face in his hair. That beautiful, matted, sweat-soaked golden hair. And Thor shifted beneath him, holding him close, holding him inside. They’d always said that Loki had been more like Frigga, Thor more like Odin. But in the end Loki couldn’t believe it true. Not knowing as he did how both father and brother manipulated son in the absence of mother.

Ironic, how there had been whispers of Thor, son of Odin; Loki, daughter of Frigga. And perhaps it was an obscenity to think of their relation when balls-deep in his brother, blood or no. He chuckled against the rapid pulse between the taut cords of that throat, humourless. Blood did not matter. Frigga had said so herself: her Sight foretold that they would always meet in all timestreams. Though the bond would have been different in another life, the strength would have remained the same. Loki could deny their fraternity all he wished, but in this life he would always be Thor’s brother.

And he would always be Odin’s son.

Even given the short time Odin had been awake, Loki had never seen him grieve his wife – but holding Thor now, he knew the futility of it. In both Frigga and her son there had been, always would be, something bright and stubborn and precious and _true_. Those with darkness in their hearts needed light such as theirs. And even now, even after he had thrown himself upon the Void a second time, he felt true fear. Thor could be the one lost. Loki could be the one left to mourn. It had always seemed so impossible, for all his own foolery with blades and games and dancing upon the edge of madness. But the Allfather himself now sat alone upon his throne without his queen, and the universe could be crueller than even Loki could imagine.

“Fallen so low.”

He had not realised the words spoken aloud until Thor shifted again, a low shiver through his great body at the pressure of the cock inside him. “No,” he murmured, and then lips were seeking out his. “No, we rise. Together.” Even through the kisses, he whispered, “Trust me, I’m the one who knows how to fly.”

Even with his cock still shifting in the crucible of his brother’s heat, Loki managed to roll his eyes. “As I recall, you fell from the sky so many times that your colours were black and blue, not red and gold, for more seasons than you’ll allow Heimdall to count.”

“A mere learning curve.”

Loki gasped a shuddering breath at the ripple of deep muscles along the length of his cock. “And you always have been the perfect student.”

“Only when I loved the lesson.” Moving against him, Thor’s tongue tripped over the syllables in broken cadence. Loki couldn’t decide between tears and laughter. It should have been some sort of victory; how many others could claim to have sodomised the mighty Thor?

Yet nothing of that held any importance. No names mattered here. It was as if they had returned to childhood, when night pulled darkness down low over the city. Though they’d had separate beds since leaving the nursery, it had always been more natural to crowd together into one. Beneath the sheets they had made their own little realm, lit only by a tiny flickering orb that sometimes winked out entire and left nothing more than the hush of disembodied voices. Those had been times of strange thought, flights of fancy, dreaming of things beyond them: reshaping their world, dissolving its limits. They had needed no names, there. Only one another.

The envy of a little not-dead not-girl made a terrifying sense now. And even as Loki pressed hard, there was still that second of terrifying pause, the wait for an answer, any answer. Then the response to his call came, and nothing else mattered. Burying his face into Thor’s neck, he revelled in arms strong and sheltering about his shoulders. The snap of his hips stuttered, faster. No rhythm remained, but then it was no longer needed.

Though Loki shifted Thor held him close yet, his younger brother’s neck now the crook of one bent elbow. Beneath his teeth Loki could taste the tender vulnerability of a bared throat, but his fingers dug instead into the biceps of one arm. The muscle did not yield even as his ass did, inviting him deeper. The strength of him: so entirely his own, and so freely given.

He did not deserve it. Loki knew that, had always known that, even as some part cruelly carolled how _delightful_ it would be, to watch the face of the mortal chit when he explained to her how he’d taken his cock and shoved it up his brother’s arse _and all because Thor had asked him to_.

But it did not matter. Moments like these were as only heartbeats, like he’d told him once: and in this he could not even hear his own. There were no words, either. All that remained were harsh pants, gathering just enough air to force out another thrust, another parry. Any laughter fell between them like tears, licked and kissed from skin and lip and eyelid. The hand which closed about Thor’s cock did so as if seeking something like power. Loki would never hold Mjölnir himself, but he held the one who did, and in his grasp Thor shivered and gasped and hot spill moved over his fingers like arcing current. And Loki smiled, even as fingertips left a bracelet of bruises at his throat.

“Don’t leave me alone.” But his brother’s eyes remained tight closed, even while light danced behind the pale fragile skin of their lids. His whole body still held itself taut, a lightning rod filled to bursting. Only when Loki’s hands smoothed over his face, his own approaching orgasm poised like a striking beast deep in his abdomen, did Thor open his eyes. Above his smile, they were blue and wide and perfect and free.

And then he grasped Loki’s hips like a weapon’s haft, clenched down hard on his aching cock. “ _Come with me_.”

Together, afterwards, Thor did not let him go. The thrust of Loki’s cock into him past the pleasure of his own release must have chafed and become uncomfortable, but even as Loki’s own release cooled inside him, Thor seemed utterly reluctant to allow Loki to withdraw. Instead he lay tangled in him, as if he fully intended to sleep this way – and Loki could not put it past him, awkward and messy as their awakening would eventually be.

But any attempt he made to extricate himself was met with grasping hands, low grumbles. Finally he braced both his hands upon his brother’s broad chest, and _pushed_ ; he did not go far, though Thor’s eyes finally popped fully open in his surprise.

What surprised Loki was the childish quality of the words, as if spoken by an exhausted child on the very verge of tears. “Thor, I _can’t_.”

“Loki—”

“I will not go.” And he felt the tears escape, a salty sting over sweat-dried skin. “I just…I cannot.”

Wordless, Thor allowed him to withdraw his cock. He even let him move to the bedside, taking up the bowl and cloth there. The warmth of the water, scented too by the charm upon the iron bowl, left his skin and his mind alike grateful for the cleansing. It felt easier, then, to lie beside him. They had spent many a night as boys in ways like this, the grass soft and warm around them, the summer stars laid across the broad sky like an endless map to countless adventure.

Though Loki could not bear the thought of being held, he could still feel Thor’s fingers over his – they were not holding hands. But the gentle movement of fingertips over palm and knuckle and thumb were as simple and soft as the tides of a secret cove.

“I spent so long thinking on it. After.” And his voice rose and fell like that same sea, a whisper more divine than mortal. And Loki shivered, even as Thor’s fingers were as an anchor. “But I never found any answer. All I ever saw, over and over, was your face as you fell.” Loki closed his eyes, but it did nothing to shield him from the anguish of his brother’s words. “I could always call Mjölnir back to my hand. But not you. In that moment, all was empty, and everything changed.”

Loki spoke to the darkness, both in his mind and without. “For me, it already had.”

“I know that now.”

Now there was only silence, Thor’s hand over his the only way back to reality. Loki had no true idea of the thoughts in his brother’s mind. But still it felt perfectly natural to speak his own aloud, as if in answer to silent question. “A year, by the count of the Nine Realms,” he marvelled, but it held a brittle wonder, tired and hard. “A whole year, and in all that time I found allies only through trickery and bribe.” He smiled, even as his eyes burned, drowning in the tears he dared not shed. “In three days, you had friends willing to die for you.”

He’d meant not to open his eyes again this eve, to talk only until they both slept, but Thor’s great weight shifting upon the bed startled him into throwing out an arm for balance, head swinging back and forth to catch some spatial awareness. But then Thor loomed over him, arms either side of his chest, knees straddling his hips.

Yet there was no menace in it, no demand. His eyes were dark and wide as he shook his head. “You are not me.” His smile turned crooked. “And I am not you.” He leaned down, pressed forehead to forehead, not ever once breaking gaze. “That is why it should always be you and I together. Only then does it all make sense.”

Loki lay very still. “It was not the Chitauri I encountered first.”

“Thanos?”

“No. It was another who led me to the Titan.” Thor’s brow furrowed, a strange feeling against the ridges of his own Jötunn skin. Loki took a careful breath, as if something so simple could reorder thoughts already rendered chaotic by existence itself. “But I found that contact elsewhere.”

“Loki—”

Though Thor had little need nor inclination to fear anything, Loki felt it in him then: fear of what he might say, of what it might do in these moments, or after. But as Thor moved back, still over him, but one hand upon his throat, Loki smiled. It spilled out of him and he could not stop it.

“I found a whole quarter of the universe that seemed as the Medina – but so much darker, so much deeper. All the lost and losing of the galaxy, swept up in one ragged miserable ruin, burying themselves as often as they did each other.” And he laughed, though his mouth filled with the memory of a thousand drinks: borrowed, stolen, earned, gifted, forced. “Did you know, I drank the cerebral fluid of a celestial being inside the skull case of her own brain. And she tasted like _Ragnarök_ and blood.”

“Loki.”

But he did not stop, not even for the concern in his brother’s grave features. “At first I wondered if you would come.” And when Thor’s mouth opened one hand shot up, two fingers pressing down on his lips hard enough to bruise. “But then I thought: even if I proved worthy of being saved, there would always be the subsequent debt from that rescue. And it has already destroyed me once. I might have been a child the last time I was saved, and I might never have known it – but still I carry that debt. And I will, forever.”

Though Loki could feel the fierce heat of the berserker beneath, there was a serenity to Thor’s words that struck him as both wonderful and terrible. “There are no debts between us.”

“Do not be a fool, Thor,” he said, suddenly very tired. But he could not turn his face away. Thor would not allow it. His lips were very careful, very knowing, where they pressed a kiss just over the beat of his heart.

“It is trust, not foolishness.”

Loki turned his eyes to the canopy overhead, did not realise he’d bit his lip all the way through until he tasted salt and iron. “In some ways they are very much the same thing.”

“Loki.” Thor’s chest pressed close to his, their breathing now moving in rhythm, one thigh pressed between his own. And he smiled, lips moving in combined kiss and promise. “We _will_ defeat Thanos. And it will be no debt owed to me when we do.” Another kiss, first to his jaw, then to where his pulse beat quick in his throat. “Instead it will be my pleasure to see yours cleared.”

Loki’s hands curled to loose fists at his sides. “I’m not certain you are supposed to encourage my penchant for death and destruction.”

“But it is part of you.” Loki’s brow furrowed, but even as he opened his mouth to complain Thor’s brushed gently over one nipple, then began to trail downward. “And I want to know every inch of you,” he said, and there was a wickedness gleaming in his eyes when he glanced upward over the plains of stomach and chest. “I want to _love_ the same.”

Loki would have mocked the sentiment of it – _had_ to mock the sentiment of it – but Thor proved too quick for him. The callused hands gentled his thighs apart, and even as Loki tilted his hips, felt the passage of breath over the dampness of his folds, Thor’s mouth moved lower yet. The flicker of a tongue over his second entrance hissed the breath from him. Thor grinned even as Loki levered himself upward on his elbows, trapped between disbelief and amusement.

“Only _you_ would find interest lower when you’ve a completely adequate quim to hand.”

“I did say _every_ inch.”

He did not wait for Loki to engage him any further in wordplay – there was only ever one conclusion to such. And to Loki’s mind, it seemed certain that Thor found this more a pleasure than a chore. Still he made a sudden swipe upward, and when he spared another glance from his work Loki’s cock twitched to see the glimmer of his cunt’s juices upon those generous lips.

“Hardly _adequate_ , brother,” he rumbled, and Loki’s hand moved down, gripped firm in the tangle of glittering hair as he pushed him back to his work. Thor’s laughter still shifted over his skin like brontide as he worked his tongue around the ring of tight muscle, and then slowly in. But it was only lazy, only curious. Loki simply lay back, somewhere on the cusp of early arousal but too dream-trapped to chase it down. His hand moved gentle now, cradling the swell just above the back of his neck. Regretfully, Thor drew back. He did not leave. Rather, he came up the bed beside him, long body satiated and gleaming in the low light. His eyes were dark and open where they met Loki’s own half-closed ones, hand soft on the curve of his neck.

“Perhaps it is something for another day,” he murmured, and Loki snorted.

“Oh, how like you, to fall asleep before the job is done.”

Then he hissed: a strong hand had closed about his flaccid cock, gave the over-sensitised flesh one, two, three quick jerks. In return it offered an interested twitch, but it did not quite rise.

When Thor looked up again to meet his eyes, they were laughing. “As I see it, you need sleep as much as I do.”

Despite the fact they lay nose to nose upon a ruined bed, Loki still managed a haughty tilt. “I might rise to the occasion.”

“I know you would.” For all the sensuous promise of that knowing, the soft kiss he pressed to the top of Loki’s head felt little but fraternal. “But I shall let you sleep, now.”

The hard length that dug into his thigh as he curved against the other said otherwise, but Thor’s breathing was even, undemanding. “What a good big brother you are,” he muttered, and felt rather than saw Thor’s broad smile.

“For you again, I would be anything.”

Loki snorted, but said no more. It would only ruin the moment, should he say what twisted upon his tongue now.

_And that’s why I am so afraid, you fool._


	16. 3.4: Caduceus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I suppose the plot had to get its arse back here sometime.

The training grounds were never empty this hour – or indeed, at any time of the day. Midmorning still managed to be a near-liminal time between scheduled bout and teaching session. After the rigours of the first exercises, many had moved off to other tasks in the city and beyond her borders. They would come back in the hour before the midday meal, but for now a strange little silence had descended over the yards, enclosing it from the palace and city beyond.

His head jerked at the croak of a watching raven. As sharp a look he gave the thing, it earned but one impassive in return. Breaking their tangled gaze, Loki felt his lip curl. Let it watch what it wanted. It could follow him all day and take tales back to the Allfather of how the stolen son fucked the true one up the ass, if that was what the old bastard wanted.

Amongst the few people who remained to the training grounds Loki caught no sign of Thor, though he had not entirely expected to. Loki had not seen him at all this morning, having woken alone. There had been no unkindness in the gesture, even to his suspicious mind; the fire had been built up, and blankets tucked about his still nude form. It seemed an odd concern to harbour towards a frost giant, but then Thor had always had strange ideas about comfort.

A pitcher of water, charmed to remain cool, rested upon one of the bedside tables. Beside had been set a basket of fruit and sweet, soft breads. These items were not alone. Thor had left him a note in his surprisingly small handwriting, so deliberate in its angular form. Loki clearly remembered watching him learn his letters as a child: hunched over his desk, arm curled about the page, fingers wrapped tight around the stylus, tongue stuck out of one corner of his mouth as he fiercely attacked the task set before him.

_I have gone to see Jane; before I brought you to our chambers, she took the time stone and said she would attempt to stabilise it as she does the Vanadís. Come seek me out when you wake. I shall either be in her company still, or perhaps in the yards. I may also have taken her to speak with Heimdall, should it prove necessary._

And the final words, written after a pause, were different: the ink thicker, pressed deeper into the vellum as if that might give them deeper meaning and truth.

_I love you._

“I did not expect to see you out here.”

Before leaving his brother’s chambers Loki had slipped back into the feminised form of his Jötunn skin, playing at being Thor’s former thrall Járnsaxa, though much of his face and body were concealed in the fur-lined cloak he chose to wear even in the Asgardian heat. He smiled now into the pale fur of a snow bear’s pelt, and didn’t bother looking at his company. “I am a guest. I believe I can go where I please.”

“You are no guest.”

He would have expected nothing less from Sif; his smile glinted predatory white when he turned to face her. “I see Fandral has spread the good word.”

“Hogun, actually.”

“Always the bearer of happy tidings.”

She did not respond immediately, but that was common enough of her; unlike her preferred associates, she had more of a tendency to give thought to action and word before rushing headlong into either. She was also clearly on guard; presumably she’d been in the yards, giving and receiving instruction. The long muscles of arm and leg held the lazy tension of recent exertion, though her hands, strapped and motionless at her side, seemed primed for violence.

“How many times are you going to do this to him?” Sif asked, sudden and unforgiving in their demand, and Loki arched an eyebrow.

“Hogun? Why, until he has a reaction that’s more than a twitch of his left cheek. I am certain he’s capable of more. I simply have to unlock that potential.”

She wore now the kind of sideways smirk that tended to precede decapitation. “I am glad, then, to have found you here.”

“Oh?” Though everything about her stance suggested she had readied herself for combat, Loki kept himself long and relaxed, leaning against the railing. With a tilt of his head he could watch some of the younger recruits down below, raking the sand into regular furrows and ridges. It was tedious work, appealing mainly to the perfectionist, but had long been considered an essential method of learning a warrior’s discipline. Thor had always been remarkably good at it, though he’d rarely shown the required amount of restraint anywhere else. It had always infuriated Loki to be bested by Thor at this most mundane of tasks.

“Shall we take a bet, perhaps?”

She snatched up his attention again with that, though he didn’t bother to mask his scorn. “We’re hardly at the tables of some gambling den down in the Medina, Sif.”

“That is not the wager I meant.” With two steps closer, he could scent her unusual fragrance: wood shavings, earth, oil, and something rather less undefinable; his mind associated it with wild animals kept in Vanir menageries. Her eyes glinted as she raised her chin, long ponytail coiled like a whip over one shoulder. “I _did_ promise I would kill you.”

Long as he had known her, the threat prickled over his skin as though delivered by a stranger. He smiled anyway. Her dual blade remained sheathed, unseen. “I am not so certain what passed between me and Thor on Svartálfaheimr and beyond might exactly be what he would name as _betrayal_.”

“Thor has never been in a position to make that sort of judgment without bias.”

“Oh, and you believe _yourself_ capable of such?”

The fingers of her left hand snapped, a sound like old-fashioned gunshot. She’d always been terribly pretty when she smiled, even when it promised blood. “I am not actually planning to kill you, as much a pity as that is.” Now the smile had turned to something all teeth and sharp edges, and he found himself leaning towards it. “I propose instead a duel.”

“Norns, must we always solve our problems this way?” he snorted, though still he curved close to her even as she did the same in turn; they’d always disproved the axiom that those of similar personality could only repel one another. His own grin had turned feral. “Surely if Hogun had the urge to inform you of my survival and the form it took, even his taciturn report would not have omitted the way Thor defended my maiden honour against the lusty Freyr?”

Her strapped fingers rested now upon hip and thigh. “He does seem to forget that you are perfectly capable of defending yourself – whether the methods are honourable or not is another matter entirely.”

“We do all need our little games.” Now he inclined himself away, though not without regret; she’d always been one of his favourite sparring partners. For Sif, there had never been any half measures. The lie still came easy when he said, “I’m not interested in fighting you.”

“I don’t require your interest. It’s not what this is about.”

With no immediate answer to hand, Loki cast a considering gaze over the yards below. They grew quieter with each passing moment, the boys moving further away with their rakes.

Sif had no idea of what had passed between Loki and his brother the day before. The mortal naturally would have her suspicions – but then, she had been there. Jane Foster had seen Loki take his bite of the apple, and presumably had gathered that the split second between that and Thor rising to race across the skies with his brother’s limp body in his arms was only relative. But then, for now, it was more important that it was just another stone collected, aglint though it might be with the kind of fire that reforged universes entire. With the Vanadís still not distilled, Jane Foster had work of her own to do.

But for all the knowledge she lacked about their relationship now, Sif’s eyes lay accusing upon him. She must have spoken with him this morning – and Thor’s easy joy could never hope hide the haunted misery worn like a scar somewhere deeper than his usual façade of warrior prince. Sif _knew_ that Loki had hurt her precious prince, and it drove her mad that she did not know how.

And now she stood before him, like an avenging valkyrie come to take heads and hearts, and Loki closed his eyes. Thor always had had a type. Across the way, the raven was laughing.

Now he opened his eyes again, gave her an entirely pleasant smile. “I should think this is not an appropriate place. Too public, yes? For how long do you believe Thor’s recently acquired pet Jötunn will remain incognito if half the barracks come to watch us fight?”

She shrugged. “Battles may be fought anywhere.”

“So we both do know,” he said, “yet it seems hardly appropriate.” At the scowl growing upon her lovely features, he waved one hand, long sleeve flapping elegantly between them. “Oh, I know you long to do me harm for what I have done to your beloved Thor, but he would not appreciate it. Trust me.”

She snorted, disbelieving of his daring. “Thor does not always know what is best for him.”

“That is why he has me.”

“He’s had you all his life, and see what good it has brought him.”

“He has not had me like _this_.” The gold-flecked hazel of her eyes darkened, her mouth twisting; he couldn’t help his own cruel smirk. “And to that end, we should not fight. I know you wish to learn better how to defeat a frost giant, but that does go somewhat against our most current foreign policy in that sector.”

Her stance held strong, simple in its power. “I would fight you for his honour and his happiness anytime. Anywhere.”

And Loki, still indolent against the railing, opened his wide in only half-feigned surprise. “Why do you wish so badly to fight me, Sif?” She scoffed, but he kept going. “We’ve only been doing for the entire time we’ve known one another. There’s time enough yet for another bout in the ring, rather than in mere words. Why do you want to do this now?”

The short sword was unsheathed and drawn back faster than another might blink. Sif brought it down just as quickly, though hardly with her full strength; for all its carefully maintained edges, Loki caught and parried it upon his gauntleted forearm. When he shoved it aside, he found his mouth twitching at its corners.

“Oh, and attacking an unarmed refugee, _that_ passes for honour amongst Asgardians these days?”

“You have never been unarmed a day in your life.” Her shield, she left strapped to her back; instead she narrowed her form, one foot behind and one back, sword crossed over her body. “Now, fight.”

Loki blinked. “But rumour says I have always been so much better at running.”

“Rumours often have some glimmer of truth.”

Then he laughed, as carefree as any child. “And so they do.”

Turning upon a heel, he was gone. The cloak he shed as easily as a lizard losing its tail; the leathers he wore beneath were not those he had chosen as the prince, but were familiar enough to move easily in. Even the strangenesses of this feminised form could not cripple his grace, could not overwrite a thousand years of a warrior’s training.

The raven’s cawing laughter underwrote their pounding footsteps. His lip curled. How very like the old man, to do nothing more than watch, old gnarled fingers too crippled by time to do more than pull strings on his marionettes. Did he never think others had strung those their own – and that others had cut them all clean away?

With the corridors deserted, he could move without fear of being observed by overly curious eyes – but even with his light steps, he could only just blunt the echo of his movement. And the Lady Sif had always moved quick; like any warrior slighter than the majority, speed became a strength whether it was one innate or not.

One glance back told him how close she had come, hard on his trail. Loki could not help but smile as he thrust more weight forward and down, pushed off harder. She would catch him, but only when he wished it.

A windowseat caught his roving eyes. With arms wide he braced his hands to the frame, leapt up, ready to pass through to the gardens. Halfway through the manoeuvre a strong hand caught him by the boot, dragged him back and down. Loki didn’t bother hiding a laugh as he rocked to the side, caught his weight, used the momentum to spin about and block the descending curve of her blade with both forearms crossed.

“Stop playing,” she snarled. “ _Fight_.”

One foot shot out, caught her in the shin; neither the momentum nor the force was enough to knock her down, but it drove her back half a step. With the quicksilver speed of a fish loosed to the river, Loki slipped away into the gold and grey shadows of the cloistered corridor. A curse echoed vicious off the corridors, and then he felt her resume her chase. In turn Loki let his laughter trail behind him, light and mocking. Every muscle swelled with the pump of swift blood, and the air tasted of spice and sun.

With a dodging step he ducked beneath an archway covered in ivy, its latticed gate stood open. It was the entrance to but one of the many courtyards scattered about the palace; Frigga could never have tended all individually, but they still bore the beauty of her tending hand. At the centre of this one he turned, hands extended and now double-bladed. His smile curved sharper yet when she came before him.

“Is this really how you wish it to be?”

While Loki chose now not to move, Sif began a careful circle, putting his back to no escape route. The sword she kept low before her eyes, eyes narrowed and watchful. She had become a cat with her prey – but then prey often had claws and teeth of their own. His daggers glinted in the sun as he relaxed, retightened his grip. Despite the heat of the rising sun his Jötunn skin still held a pleasant chill. He didn’t know the mechanism of it. He didn’t care to know. He focused instead on the gaze upon him.

In turn Sif did the same, their universes narrowed to the same tensioned space. The dark hair was now lightly sheened with sweat at the temples, shimmering and shining like a polished blade. She’d been fair of hair, once upon a time. Just as his own skin had once been white and unmarred by lines of heritage or history.

“You could best me in battle,” he said, clear and sudden as a war drum calling her soldiers to arms. “But what does it prove? You can’t kill me. He’d never allow it.”

“Perhaps we are not so much equals.” And she grinned, beautiful and bold and far too brave to be sensible. “I can best you in battle. But it’s not about that.”

“Oh, yes, you just like killing for the fun of it.” Then he tilted his head, though his blades remained ever at the ready. “Or is it all for him?”

“You’re a fool if you believe that.” And now she extended the sword – hardly an offensive gesture, but rather a decorative one. “It’s wasn’t for him. It wasn’t even for me.” Now she withdrew the blade, bringing it back to an actual fighting stance. “I wanted to be sure you would not run when you needed most to stand your ground.”

“Oh, but I am such a coward. I’ll run when I get my next chance.”

“No.” He started, hands loose about the daggers; her grin was lopsided, half a scowl. “Because much as I’m loathe to admit it, you did not lie that day.”

It was only something very much like bravado that kept his voice from trembling, kept the false smile plastered upon motionless features. “We have known each other many days, and I have lied on many of them.”

“ _I love Thor more dearly than any of you_.” She took two steps forward and he was too shocked to move; her sword remained at her side, unsheathed, but it was the sharpness of her gaze he feared now.

“I’ll slit your throat from ear to ear and smile wider yet for it if you lied about that, Loki.”

He smiled, but everything came as if from a distance, body numb and distant like it belonged to a stranger. “You know I did not.”

“I do _now_.” And she, the consummate warrior, turned her back on an armed opponent. “That’s the horror of it,” she whispered, words half-lost in the sheathing of her sword. Loki stood so still that she almost made it through the open gate before he could call after her.

“What, you will not finish what you started?”

“I would if I could.” She turned, one eyebrow raised. “But I did not start it.”

“Then who did?”

She had no answer to that. All he could see in the gloom of the gate was the gleam of her eyes, like green-flecked iron. Then: she was gone.

The tremble of his hands subsided after only long moments as he tended to himself. First the daggers he slipped back into their secret places; then the leather he smoothed down over the alien curves of this body before he flicked too-long hair back over one shoulder.

Then he yanked it forward again, and began a loose braid. As thick as his wrist, it would end in a length greater than that of his forearm. When it was done, he could only stare at it, not knowing why it seemed somehow wrong. The weave was strong, taught to him years ago by his mother. Yet given his own hands were the one that had wrought it, he could not be sure it would hold.

“Cultivating friendship as per usual, I see.”

Loki’s fingers spasmed over the braid. Then he let go, watched as the dark rope slid through his fingers and swung itself away. “She was the one who brought the quarrel.”

“So you say.”

Only when he stopped speaking did Loki have strength enough to turn and face him. With every passing day he appeared more and more the old man he was becoming, but age could not truly mask the strength that remained in him. Perhaps it was Asgard itself; though custody of the realm took from its protector, it gave much in return to its champion. Loki had felt it himself, high upon Hliðskjálf: it had wanted to keep him. To draw him in, to pull roots into the soil, and make him the realm’s as much as the realm was his.

The thought but reminded him of a far greater tree – and they would have to travel there together. It would not the first time Loki had done so, though he’d never personally spoken with the Norns. The experience had been strange and singular enough just when he had laid a hand upon the gnarled bark and known it for what it was: the very heartwood of their realms.

“From there come the dews that drop in the valleys. It stands forever green over Urðr's well.” The murmuring from childhood lesson passed his lips without thought; only when the Allfather coughed low did he realise he’d spoken as much aloud.

“The tree, Loki?”

He shook his head, fierce and furious. And he kept any answer to himself. It was far less agonising to return to even the idiotic topic of earlier. “Do you truly believe she would have been an appropriate bride for Thor?” he snapped, perhaps too quickly; the amusement in Odin’s expression was barely tempered by his patient conviction.

“You speak of the concept as if it had already departed the realms of possibility.”

“You said my fate was to die. Cast out on a rock.” He did not bother with a false smile. At this stage cold hatred would be tool enough. “Yet it never seems to stick, does it.”

“These things do not come to pass by simple chance, Loki.”

“No. They do not.” And now some part of him want to smile broad and cruel, to let spill from his smirking lips how he had laid the golden son of Asgard down on his own bed and fucked him until he cried.

_Until we both cried_.

The flutter of dark wings startled him, but when he turned the bird’s passing had already slipped away, unseen. Loki let the thought go with it. This was something of his own. Something he never need share.

Odin’s one eye, dark in the gleam of early morning sun, seemed to take in far more than it ever gave. “At the very least,” he said, “she will not seek to leave Asgard and take her with him.”

Frost giant or no, the Allfather’s words could still turn his blood cold enough to burn. The words themselves almost froze upon numb lips before he spoke them. “The terms of my co-operation state that I willnot be sent into exile.”

“They state that _I_ shall not send you into exile.” The correction, given with the didactic indifference of a lecturer, stung like a thousand childhood memories. It only grew worse when the Allfather added with impassive conviction: “I am not responsible for what moves in your own mind.”

“Except I am your son and I learned at your knee.”

The hissed tone barely made the old king blink. “You only say so when it might be used as a weapon,” he observed, and then raised one hand to still any overemotional response. “But tell me, Loki: what makes you worthy of him? Why should _you_ have him when he was born to belong to Asgard?”

His grin had no teeth, and no humour. “Does he not have a choice in this?”

“You know he does not.” The hardness had returned; dressed in grey and gold, the Allfather might have been little more now than gilded granite. “Thor _must_ become king.”

Loki’s face turned away. “I remember the terms of our contract.”

“Ah, but I am not certain you do.” A hand, laid upon his shoulder, jerked him back to reality; he pulled away quick enough to stumble over his own feet. The Allfather made no move to stop him, nor to steady. His single eye remained as aloof as the rest of his kingly form. “You must remember, Loki, that while one might affect the stitch of the threads, the weft is always the same.”

“We have had this conversation,” he sneered back, and Odin only nodded.

“For many, many years.”

Given their long history, Loki knew they could argue this point for hours upon end. Glancing to the gate, he unconsciously drew himself upward. “I have work to do,” he said, cool, but any maturity was soon lost when he turned to add: “Surely even at your advanced age it’s not an entirely foreign concept. Perhaps you could find some of your own?”

Odin’s smile was as sudden as it was wry. “Would you really wish me to put my mind to entertaining itself?” The pause he took only made its purpose clear in the quiet reverence of his next words. “It’s already a very tangled thread you weave with, my son. Do you really believe you have learned enough to work it in such a way?”

Though it felt as if the Allfather had shoved burning coals beneath his feet, Loki held his ground. And his words were as ice. “Do you not _ever_ speak to me of her.”

The smile widened, but briefly; his voice turned gruff, hoarsened by some emotion Loki could not dwell upon. “She has her ways, Loki.” He stepped forward, as if to walk past his once and future son and through the gate; though Loki flinched away, he did not move quick enough to miss the light press of Odin’s palm upon his shoulder. “As you have yours. Walk them as you will. You are the only one who can.”

His hand fell, and the king had taken his leave. Resisting the urge to rub at his shoulder – or to leave his hand upon it – Loki closed his eyes. Odin had left the worst of it unspoken: the memory of a denial given from a throne on high. Yes, Loki truly was the only one who could walk such paths of darkness and danger.

_Or should._

 

*****

 

“Dr. Foster.”

She didn’t even look up. “Loki.”

The half-hearted acknowledgement of his presence in her makeshift laboratory should have burned. Had it been anyone else, Loki would have crossed the floor and demanded his due as both prince and notorious villain. Instead he moved through the dimly lit chambers with careless ease, noting with reluctant interest that she had apparently mastered the diagnostic tool of projecting an object’s state. The diagrams hung in the air about her, their light reflecting from pale skin and dark eyes. He elicited no further response from the scientist even when he stood directly before her worktable.

“I need to discuss a matter of the infinity stones with you.”

She snorted, but only lightly; her work still held more interest than he. “You already know I haven’t stabilised the Vanadís yet.”

“That is not my key concern at this moment.” Still she did not look up, and he turned his own gaze to trace over the information collated in her projections. In more than one place, he could see the hand of the gatekeeper – and his own mother. Heimdall and Frigga had always had an odd friendship, one that he had never been able to define. He was not entirely sure they had either.

“Have you considered how they might be used together?” he asked, glancing down to see that her gloved hands moved over a crystalline structure, as small and fragile as the hands that held it.

“No. But just add it to the list, I’ll get round to it eventually.” And now she glanced up, lips very thin. “By the way, I’ve already dealt with whatever the hell you did to the time stone, just so you know. You’re welcome.”

That was a match to the kindling of his temper. “You have it?”

“No. Thor took it to the vaults.” Her smile now held a feigned innocence, accented by the bat of her long eyelashes. “Not real sure he trusts you with it.”

The slight smirk he gave in return was but a poor disguise worn over his sudden unease. “Would you?”

All amusement fled her expression now, hands gone very still. “Considering I have no idea what you did and Thor won’t admit you even did _anything_ , yeah. Well. We’ll go with _fuck, no_.”

It should have amused him. Instead he turned his attention to another listing. Though the technology driving the projection was entirely Asgardian, the words and numerals were in her native tongue. It was no surprise, given the act of drawing out the shimmering diagrams was at least partially a mental exercise on part of the caster, but its illegibility made him scowl.

“I cannot fault your judgement,” he murmured, instead, and Jane rolled her eyes.

“No duh.” With one foot pulled up between herself and the thick edge of her table, she swung on the back legs of her chair. Her head tilted, curious and cold. “So what _did_ you do?”

“You do not believe my brother when he says I did nothing?”

“No.”

To have his innocent question met with such disdain amused him. With a little tsking noise, Loki raised one hand, carefully shifted a tangle of numbers from one corner to the next. Jane’s eyes were upon him the whole time, and he did not doubt her quick mind calculated both that scholastic manoeuvre, and also what might move in his own thoughts.

“Look, all I know about it is this: you put an apple seed in your mouth, you _bit_ it, and you _exploded_. Then Thor grabbed you and you _imploded_ and if it wasn’t for the fact it was _you_ I’d be all over that because hey, relative time dilation in a highly compressed space. You don’t see that every day. But in the end Thor just ditched me with the stone and took off with you.”

It was not an entirely dispassionate summary; the hitch her voice took at the end spoke of a woman still somewhat bewildered by the way her romance had ended. Perhaps he did them both a favour when he glanced back, said evenly, “How did you contain it?”

“The other two seeds. I don’t know. Iðunn took the apple and kind of caught them all inside, and then they…coalesced. Into one. I’m not sure, but the apple seems to be holding it.” Her hands rose, fell, like the sea in unexpected tide, “It’s transparent. Like a Leiden jar, or fireflies in amber, or something. I don’t know. What did you _do_?”

Loki flicked his eyes sideways. “Suffice it to say I was rather naughty, and my big brother gave me quite the spanking, and leave it at that, shall we?”

“Yeah. Well.” Already she reached for a stack of papers, scribbled and creased and even torn in places; she had been often too overenthusiastic with the sharp nib of an unfamiliar stylus. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”

“Indeed you do, but in regards to the stones and their combined powers,” he said with light force, reaching into the spelled bag slung over one shoulder. “They have a focus and a filter already.”

Her eyes widened to see the book he produced – far too large for a bag so small. Yet she only held out her hands as if accepting a child, expression both exasperated and intrigued. “Well, that makes life easier.”

“They call it the infinity gauntlet.”

It was a strange sensation, giving her the book – or at least, laying it open before her. Whatever else she had become in these strange days, Jane Foster was just a mortal, and there were few enough in Asgard itself permitted to read such tomes. But beneath the reluctance, the faint scorn of it: intrigue. His curiosity about hers could not be denied, and even in the dim light of projection and wall sconce Loki could already see the fresh thoughts flickering behind her dark eyes.

Like many a tactile person, Jane lifted her hand, rested her fingers upon the illustration: soft and hesitant at first, as if she expected the shimmering ink to bite. Then she flattened her palm, brow furrowed. “Please tell me it doesn’t look that tacky in real life.”

His eyebrows drew together. “Tacky?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of… _fabulous_.”

Though her colloquialisms did not quite carry over well in the Alltongue, he thought he caught the gist of it. “It does change depending on the one who wears it,” he said, dry, and she snorted.

“Thank god for small favours.” When she looked up, her eyes were very steady. “Are you planning to wear it?”

“No.”

The pause told him she didn’t believe a word of it, but then he hadn’t expected her to. “I hope Thor’s not this flashy,” she muttered, looking down again to the faint movement of ink upon the page; the archivist of the vaults had always been very clever in her art. “Although…he could probably blind Thanos with the bling, if nothing else.”

“I do not intend for Thor to wear it either.”

When she looked up this time, it was a motion both very slow and very firm. “I’m not a magician. Or a warrior. I’m a _scientist_.”

“I intend for Thanos to wear it.”

Her entire body seemed to take a step sideways, for all she was sitting down. But she did not rise, and she did not run. Her hands fisted upon the table, and her expression hardened to stone. “Oh, great, are you going to kill me now you’ve told me your diabolical plan?” Though she spoke with an exasperated kind of bravado, Loki did not miss the way her arms now crossed tight over her chest, the way her feet settled more firmly upon the floor. “Because you know what, Loki? I’m sure you’ve had this conversation with more people than just _me_ , but Thor does not deserve more of this shi—”

“It is for Thor that I do this.”

“Oh, _horseshit_.”

Loki struck with the force and speed of a snake. With his entire body and presence up in her face, the girl could do nothing but bend over backward in the chair. It trapped her arms either side, his own hands like claws, face but millimetres from hers. Those dark doe eyes had gone very wide, skin turned the colour of spoiled milk.

“Do not presume to know my motivations, mortal.” Each word he spoke very light, the teetering ice of a serac on the point of collapse, of avalanche. “You might have caught his interest in the course of those strange days, but you know _nothing_ of him: his mind, his soul, his _heart_.” And now he snarled, not even certain she would understand words given in so feral a tone. “Because they are _mine_ , and I will surrender them to no-one – not Thanos, the not the Allfather, not Asgard…least of all some mortal chit who would run screaming in fear the first she ever saw the true face of the berserker.”

But for all her pallor, for all the faint tremor keeping her whole body in motion, Jane Foster did not once look away from his crimson gaze. “And somehow I’m still here,” she said, quiet. “And not just because he needs me.” She swallowed, convulsive, and then steadied herself again. “Because _you_ need me.”

He let her go, let her chair fall hard upon the floor. “You foolish girl.” Strangely, his fury had him turning his face away from her. Out of his line of vision now, she gave a little sobbing laugh.

“Yeah, well, there are worse things to be.” There was a burst of scraping movement, objects pushed roughly about her worktable. “Sitting around a London flat for a year, crying into my coffee while watching Jeremy Kyle reruns is just one of them. You think _you’re_ terrifying: you’re nothing compared to that. To forgetting why you’re here. Or why you do these things.”

For all he’d always claimed otherwise, Loki was as weak to challenges as Thor himself. “My brother belongs to me,” he hissed, leaning forward again. Jane held her ground, seated in her chair, colour burning high in her cheeks.

“Yeah, well, mate? I’m here for the science. So let me fucking science, would you?”

It was capitulation enough that Loki backed away; any satisfaction he felt still mixed poorly with fresh disgust. “I should have known you did not truly care for him.”

Her hand came down hand upon the wood, rattling the glass and metal upon it. “Oh, for Christ’s sake – people’s reasons for the stuff they do are more complicated than just the one thing! You should know, I’m sure you have ten thousand bullshit reasons just for walking down a city street.” And before Loki could work around his surprise, she swiped at a projection, scattered its light all about the chamber. “So what are we doing? Getting this Michael Jackson wannabe glove and just sticking the stones in? Is that how magic works with you guys?”

When he looked at her now, he felt as though he had discovered a new and exotic creature. And so he leaned back upon the bench, fingers digging deep enough in the wood to leave grooves like fresh-scarred skin. “I wish Thor to believe that he will wear the gauntlet.”

“Oh, fuck’s sake.” In that she sounded oddly like her loud and boisterous companion back in London; Jane even took on a shadow of Darcy’s appearance, in the way she pinched the bridge of her nose and rolled her eyes skyward. “You’re recruiting me to help you lie to your brother now.”

“I thought you might enjoy it. As we so unkindly left you out of the loop the last we all worked together before an enemy on the field of battle.”

“Yeah, but your loops are more like nooses to hang yourself with.” Her small fingers, not much more than those of a child, drummed tuneless against the workbench. “I’m presuming we’re reverse engineering it or something, yeah?”

“Something to that effect.” It all tasted of bitter gall, but it was a medicine Loki would force himself to swallow. “Given how closely you too must work with the stones, and with what little time we have, I could not do this without your…assistance.”

“Partnership.” At the startled look he gave her, she shrugged. “I’ll even co-author you on the paper. If anyone ever even believes me.”

“You do me honour.”

Dripping as the words did with sarcasm, she nodded. “More than you know. Or deserve.” And then she was looking again at the diagram, face screwed up in that formidable concentration he could not help but admire. “So we’re wiring this thing back to front, then? Is that because you’re going to get Thor to try to use it while expecting Thanos just to take it off him?”

He should have expected her to be quick. It still needled, like small knives pressed just under the skin. He reached over, snagged a piece of mostly clear paper, and a stylus to match before he muttered, “Something to that effect.”

“So he’s stronger than Thor.”

Flat as the question was, it forced his glance upward from the alchemical notations he had begun to make. “For all he enjoys letting the realms believe otherwise, he is not the ultimate strength in any universe.”

“I never thought he was.” Loki returned to his work, but he could feel the mortal’s gaze upon him, as flat and demanding as the eyes of Muninn and Huginn. “I was just asking for relative stats.”

He snorted, his stylus never once breaking movement now. “Do you think he bothers with that?”

“Yeah, but he’s _Thor_. We’re the ones doing the heavy lifting when it comes to backgrounds and battle plans.”

That made him chuckle, and without sound; he would have to be quick, to give her the information she needed before he must go elsewhere. Given the way he switched carelessly between the runic scripts of old and new Asgard, with a dash of logographic Vanir, she could not read them, certainly. He still had little doubt she would manage.

“So.” One hand fell upon the table, the slap of flesh on wood like a firework’s flare. “Thanos. Stronger than Thor or not?”

The chains of numerals grew longer beneath his pen. “It is not so much a matter of strength, as we are dealing with a being who is accustomed to simply having matters as he wants them.”

“The way I hear it, that’s how _you_ see Thor. So what’s the power differential then?”

Quick as her mind was, he despaired of ever coming up with an analogy she her mortal limitations would allow her to understand. “Killing Thanos is not really an option – but Thor is my elder brother. Even should I explain to him that it would be impossible, still he will try.”

“He seems to do that a lot.”

“You have no idea.” And for once, he did not believe anyone should envy him that knowledge. Pausing in his writing, Loki dug a hand back through his hair and pursed his lips, then nodded his head towards her workspace. “You know from your own experience that the infinity stones are an overwhelming artefact, even in their singular form.” The look she gave him then suggested had the situation been different, she might have clawed his eyes out for that. He smiled, charming and clear. “The gauntlet is designed to dampen their effect. The combined energies of all six together would still destroy almost all who might seek to wield them, but there are those who could.”

“Thanos.”

“Indeed.”

She paused, and her uncertainty might have been endearing in less dire circumstance. “And Thor? If he wore it…what would happen?”

“I cannot be certain.” And he swallowed, hard and hoarse. “Though if he asks, I will tell him yes, it can be altered to his own power levels. Which is why I will give it to him.”

Jane frowned, but the brightness in her eyes spoke otherwise as to her natural attitude towards such stark dangers. “Okay, I get it now. It’s not reversal, you’re dialling down the filters.”

“Yes.” His smile was entirely unpleasant. “If Thanos forcibly takes it from Thor believing it calibrated for an elemental berserker, he may very well open himself to the stones too far, too fast.”

“But it won’t kill him.”

“Very few things might kill one who worships Death herself.” His own skin crawled at the thought; he had never met the mistress of the Titan, but he had felt the cool skeletal hand of Death upon his body, more than once. “But it will weaken him for some time. And even should he regain his strength, I will have fulfilled my bargain. He will have had all six infinity stones in his grasp.” Opening his hands, Loki leaned back, a magician at the end of his act awaiting applause. “Hardly my fault that he could not keep them.”

He received no such glory from Jane Foster. “Is he the kind to drop a debt on semantics, though?”

“I suppose we shall find out.” Curving over the desk again, he circled a finger over one aspect of the subtle shift of the illustration. “When you have the Vanadís, this is where it shall go.”

Jane still looked at the glimmer of the enchanted inks even when Loki reached again into the space-dilation bag. Only when the clank of the gauntlet slamming onto the desk before her did she look up, eyes wide. She almost immediately looked down again.

“Where…where did you get this from?”

“The vaults.” He could only ascribe the childishness of his voice to the outrage of being looked at so disbelievingly by a mortal chit. “I _am_ still a prince of Asgard.”

It should have been no surprise that this appeared to have no effect upon her higher sensibilities; Midgardians had always been terribly ignorant of the hierarchy of the realms in which they were counted. As it was, this particular Midgardian just blinked, then waved a dismissive hand. “I honestly don’t think I want to know,” she muttered, attention already fixating upon the artefact before her. Loki did have to smother a smirk at her first entirely scientific gesture; taking up a stylus, she poked at it as if it were no more than a dead fish upon her worktable. “…yeah, I have no idea how to do this.”

Loki took up his own stylus again. “You will.”

For a long moment she only watched, neck craned so she might follow his words. Then she snorted, slumped back in her chair. “Would it kill you to write in English?”

“I am not even speaking it now.” With a flourish entirely unnecessary for anything but vanity, Loki dropped his stylus and pushed the papers over to the mortal. “Thor and I shall retrieve the last stone. I will leave you to your work in the meantime.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll keep tinkering here, home on the range, while you boys go bring home the bacon.”

At first he frowned. Then he smirked. “To ever think I thought it possible to become accustomed to the banality of you people.”

“Whatever. I have work to go. Go find your own.”

They were too much an echo, those words – and for a moment they held him still, repeating over and over in his mind like a mantra, like a curse.

Then he rose, and turned from her.

“Of course, Dr. Foster.”

 

*****

 

In this Loki could almost taste the memory of days long past: two brothers, two princes, sat high and true upon their gilded mounts as they rode to the Observatory, and towards adventure. But Thor did not lead as had been his youthful wont, racing headlong down the rainbow bridge so that its melodious song became a cacophony of sound and light. Instead the horse’s hooves made a rippling song like concentric circles upon a water’s surface; Thor had pulled his to a jogging trot, forcing Loki to fall back to keep pace.

“What is bothering you, brother?”

Thor’s hands tightened upon the reigns, but his voice remained airy, unconcerned. “What has you believing that something is?”

“I’ve known you almost my entire life. And your face might as well be blown of glass, for all it hides how you feel.” Loki spoke with the easy mockery that had always come so easily to the younger of two siblings; when he looked to Thor, however, all had softened into genuine concern. “Brother. Please tell me.”

Thor snorted, light; yet when Loki watched him, his form was ever so slightly at odds with the rhythm of the horse’s trot beneath him. “Demanding as always,” he said, and Loki outright scowled.

“ _Thor_.”

For a moment he believed Thor would just brush his concern aside, as he had so often when they had been younger – when they had been all but different people. And then he slumped forward, his horse slowing to a startled walk at the shift in his weight. “I just…wonder if it would seem…childish, to say it aloud.”

Loki pulled his own horse to a slower pace, pursing his lips. “What?”

“The old tales.” Apparently quite unable to look him in the eye, Thor focused his gaze upon where he now tangled his fingers in the braided and gilded reins. “They…they always speak of the last night, before the quest. When the hero spends that eve in the arms of his beloved.”

He couldn’t have laughed, even had he wanted to. “Yes, but in this case we have said hero in the arms of the villain, who happens also to be of a race of mortal enemies, who also happens to be his _brother_ , and who besides will be at his side—”

“And I would have it no other way.” For a second Loki feared that Thor might actually clamber off his own horse and onto Loki’s, just to get his arms around his brother. He told himself it was only concern for his poor mare that had him moving out of reach, even as Thor’s too blue eyes fixed upon him. “I want you at my side. Always.”

Loki blinked, refused to acknowledge that the sting came from unshed tears. “And thus you pretend as if nothing else matters.”

“Nothing else does.” Loki’s heart tightened, and against the pressure of the blood rushing in his eyes it ought to have exploded. But Thor had turned away, facing the endless canopy of stars both above and below, chewing his lower lip as he hadn’t since early adolescence. “But I want…”

“What do you want?”

Loki’s voice had been too small, too uncertain. Yet when Thor looked back, eyes now filled with nebula and galaxy and star, his smile was as soft as it was certain. “I just _want_.”

It was so simple it was almost sad. But it was so very serious. Loki looked down to his own reins, black and gold leather against the blue of his ungloved hands. His heart ached as if full of holes.

“You are a fool.”

“I rather believe we both are,” Thor replied, now very wry. “But I don’t know why I’m thinking of these things – it is not yet our last night before we march into battle.”

“It soon shall be.”

“Then we shall deal with it when it comes.” A shifting of hips, and Thor had corrected his rider’s seat. “Come, don’t dawdle; anybody would think you afraid of a little ash tree.”

Had Loki had anything to hand that would have made a good projectile, he’d have heaved it hard at his brother’s head. As it was, Yggdrasil waited. There was always this simple way there – and then there were always other ways. But he spurred his mare to first a canter, then a gallop, and to Heimdall at its end.

After they had tethered the horses, they entered one after the other. Thor, always first, strode forward to reached out one hand to the gatekeeper. “Hello, old friend.”

“My prince.” The great hand, wrapped in its golden armour, grasped Thor’s forearm tight in return. Loki’s brow furrowed; it was impossible not to see something possessive in that gesture, or the shifting of those golden eyes as they moved up and over Thor’s form. Loki had not seen the gatekeeper’s reaction to the passing of the queen. But then, he probably had not needed to.

Then those golden eyes moved to him, his head an incline as thoughtful and slow as a glacial advance. “Prince Loki.”

“Gatekeeper.” He did not bother with the pleasantry of a smile or a bow. “Would you deny us passage to the Tree itself?”

He did not even blink, as upright and perfect in form as any artistic masterpiece. “In defence of Asgard I would send her finest warriors willingly.” Then something in that mighty voice _changed_ , and for a moment Loki actually believed the gatekeeper sounded amused. “And you have been invited.”

The shiver moved down his spine like a rivulet of freshly drawn blood. “Pardon me?”

“You have been invited.” The helmed head inclined towards the quiescent portal. “And you are late.”

Without further warning Heimdall raised the sword, both hands tight about its jewelled hilt. The blaze of the golden blade was nothing in comparison to Thor’s idiot grin. Sudden fear hit Loki hard, followed by anger. His brother always played the fool – taking pleasure in what might be the end of them all. Thor stepped forward and Loki reached blindly out, catching him about the biceps.

“Thor, I—”

Heimdall’s words echoed about the chamber even as the whirl and wail of the rising power should have drowned out all but the Bifröst itself. “The gate is open.”

“Come, brother!” Thor spoke as carefree as any child – for a moment he _was_ again the child he had been, and Loki recoiled. His own hand hung before him, strange and small and _white_ , not the mottled blue scales of his Jötunn blood. Panicked, he looked up, and found Thor blinking at him. Only Thor. Everything was Thor.

And when he glanced back down, he was only Jötunn.

Travel by the Bifröst ought to have been no strange thing; he had done it many a time since his memories began. And yet it seemed alien now, for all it was smoother than the mortal engine, and then just different entire to the pathways he had forged himself. Perhaps it was only the lack of control; in this he had no influence over how they moved, nor where it all ended. And then it did end, and he swayed upon his feet upon foreign ground. Loki had sought out the world tree once before on his own, and there was nothing familiar here now. And then, filling his entire field of vision: Thor, hammer at his hip, still far too cheery for a man about to walk into the den of the Norns.

“We’re invited,” he said, as if reading his brother’s mind; Loki brayed scornful laughter, though in the strangeness of the world tree it had no echo, no strength, no influence.

“That does not mean the welcome carpet has been rolled out for us.”

“Come, brother, no need to dawdle.” And he was always so bright, even when he moved towards the darkness within the tangle of the massive tree. “Heimdall _did_ say we are late.”

Thor did not wait to see if Loki would accompany him. He strode out alone, a warrior archetype bold against the heart of the realms: golden hair, billowing scarlet cape, the glint of silver-grey uru in his right hand. The further he moved forward, the more distance it put between them, leaving Loki with nothing but his brother’s broad form silhouetted from behind. He felt dreadful and small, again reminded of a childhood fear: the gut churning sudden terror of being left behind. But now he had more than only the pump of small legs, never able to catch up, much less keep up; in his full adult body Loki drew even with his brother in seconds.

“Must you stomp around like a bilgesnipe let loose after eating one too many naughty children?” he groused, as if to cover his idiot fright; it apparently worked, for Thor only elbowed him in the side and spoke in a low growl.

“I will eat _you_ all up if you are not careful.”

Loki kept his eyes fixed firmly ahead. “Don’t make promises you do not intend to keep.”

“Oh, I always keep my promises.”

There was more than a child’s game in that low tone, but Loki ignored it. Him. Again. Heimdall’s words seemed to be true in at least he could not feel any discernible threat from the air around them; he’d had to move in shadow the last he’d walked the boughs and branches of mighty Yggdrasil. But even had he attempted that now, it never would have worked with Thor at his side. Those who generated such light all of their own could never conceal themselves in darkness.

“Are we going the right way?” Thor asked, sudden, and Loki scowled.

“I don’t know. I suppose I thought _you_ must know, seeing as you insist on leading us everywhere.”

The booming laugh startled him off-balance; one great arm caught him around his shoulders, drawing him close before he could even conceive of protest. It also pushed all breath from his lungs in a mad rush, and Loki struggled hard to catch it again. It was not even just his brother’s ridiculous presence and personality causing the issue: the very air here held an alien quality.

It was not as thin as that spread through space; Loki found it breathable, and more than capable enough to sustain their kind of life. Instead it had a _richness_ to it, as if with every breath he took in with the air something unspoken, as yet unborn. Spores, perhaps; _that_ was an unpleasant thought. It didn’t hold. The mighty ash took in and recycled the air around it, and so perhaps this close to her spreading leaves once just simply tasted of the _life_ she offered. Or perhaps it was but the potential any life offered. Loki glanced up and saw the great trunk rising up in the distance, they themselves so far beneath the folding branches. In that moment he felt nothing but very, very small.

There were no paths here. Before them stretched only the ground as it was, mossy and almost seeming to give way, just a little, beneath their boots. The enclosure of the thick branches and leaves did not hold for long. As Thor continued to lead the way, Loki could see he followed the brightening light; they were rewarded when the narrow space opened out into a clearing deep within the tree itself. The trunk towered at this centre, disappearing upwards to reach its impossible height. Loki did not try to follow its upward dizzying climb. Instead, he looked to what waited at the foot of all things: a spreading still pool.

“Honestly, Loki, where do we go?” Thor raked fingers back through his hair. “I suppose this is a meeting place, but…”

“I’m not sure.” Loki could not look away from the water. “Heimdall could have made himself useful, at least, and put us where we were supposed to be. If we were in fact invited at all.”

“Why would he lie?”

He snorted. “To finally get us out of his hair?”

“Well, you, perhaps.” One hand moved close, flicked one ear. “He enjoys _my_ company.”

Loki jerked away, the motion fluid and practised well. “Yes, because sometimes you go mad unless you have a fool to remind you that there are worse things.” And now he scowled, eyes still fixed upon the pool. It could be, but then it seemed too _simple_ , and he just… “…Norns, I don’t know—”

“Oh, but we _do_ know.”

He turned, words as sharp as the blade he reached for. “Who are you?”

Her smile seemed to precede her even as she began to lightly pick her way down, bare feet rustling over the pitted wood of the roots beneath. When she emerged fully from the shadows Loki regretted the words. No creature slaved to time, this one. She held the borrowed form of one, humanoid in proportion and shape: but her gnarled skin was a burnished umber, hair a rippling gold that shifted in passing shades of verdant and green.

“I am Verðandi.”

Her amusement held the warmth of sunlight filtering gentle through thick canopy. Loki licked dry lips. “Pardon us,” he said, “but I believe there are three of you.”

When she laughed, it crackled in her throat with the vibrancy of dried autumn leaves. “Oh, the sisters three would enjoy so meeting the brothers two, but it is not how it is.” Now her hands clasped before the brief swell of her chest, more like twined branches than actual fingers, and her grin widened. “We will speak here of things that are happening, not those passed or yet still to come.”

Her head tilted like a bird’s, and she glanced sideways, as if hearing a voice they could not. Her gown, long and lovely, twisted about her slim body; veined like a leaf, the lattice shone thin and shimmering like starlight spiderweb. The twist of her hair hung over her shoulder, gnarled wood curving about itself over and over again, endless spira mirabilis.

It was Thor who ventured to speak; for a moment, it was as if Verðandi had quite forgotten they were even there. “Heimdall said we were expected.”

She whipped her head back, so quick her narrow neck should have snapped. And then she blinked, and smiled too wide for the mouth she wore. “And so you are!” she said, and leaned forward. “Will you?”

One hand extended with a gesture more like growth than movement. Thor, ever the gentleman, took it. It was so small it all but vanished in his own, but from the startled look upon his face it held a great deal more strength than its size belied. Lightly she leapt from the bough, as sure footed as any mountain goat. Steady upon one foot, she seamlessly dropped in a small curtsey; Thor appeared bemused as he returned a bow that was more a nod, but the Norn had already turned to Loki.

“Do a lady a good turn,” she said with a careless flick of one bole-like arm, “and do pick up that bucket, yes?”

And then she was in motion again, more like water than a spirit bound to the whims and wishes of a tree. Loki fell into step behind her with an ease that should have been unnerving. The nature of his interests dictated that he most often travelled alone – he had even once been here unaccompanied. His hands tightened about the battered iron bail. He had never to the Well. And it could only make it easier, that Thor fell into step now at his right, warriors two walking into battle side by side.

Her guidance proved necessary but a moment later – for the Well of Urðr held little on common with any well sunk into the grounds of Asgard. Those were built up with stone and iron and golden filigree, many of these more decorative than strictly functional. Here, a bore had been sunk deep into the earth beneath and between the roots of the monstrous tree overhead, and Loki stood very still and very silent at its edge.

The water itself was stranger yet. It scarcely moved, though there was no wind to raise ripples upon the surface. He could not tell its depth, but its colour was rich and dark and yet so much bluer than the sky of Asgard. When he glanced upward, the weeping branches shielded his view of any sky here. Loki looked back down with another shiver. There was a taste of something brackish, metallic in his mouth. Unclear as the source might be, it remained somehow cool and welcoming. He did not even realise he had reached for his brother’s hand until he felt Thor squeeze his fingers in return.

Before the water Verðandi went to her knees. The mud seemed not to bother her; where their boots began to sink, she appeared to rest light upon its mutable surface. The entirety of her concentration rested upon the water itself, palms only just touching the surface. A moment later, she sighed.

“The stone entire cannot just be _given_.” She spoke sudden and almost too quick, voice crackling as if the Alltongue struggled to bring her words down to a level where they might understand it. “It is in many parts – as is reality itself.” Both hands moved in tandem now, sending out small concentric waves across the still blue surface of the well. “But it might be concentrated. If only for a little while.”

“Like the Vanadís.”

Her laughter was more a breath, disturbing the even circles of her hands’ movements. “Something like that, perhaps.” Without warning, she thrust her hands deep. Loki flinched away, though he could not understand why; at his side, Thor caught a breath, broad chest expanded. Only when she raised them did he let it go. Water streamed from palm and down the tangle of skin that seemed more branch than flesh; when she turned to him, Loki saw that she had taken two handfuls of the bed of the pool. Given the sheer unknown depth of it, it should have been impossible. Verðandi extended them towards the brothers all the same, these two hands of white clay.

“Bring me the bucket.”

The bail rattled against the body of the damned thing as Loki set it before her, but she seemed to have no care for his fear. With an easy flourish she dropped first her hands into the battered bucket, and then the clay itself. Passing an arm over her forehead, though Loki could not possibly see that such a creature might sweat, Verðandi leaned back on her arboreal heels and opened her palms before herself.

“Now.” Her smiled quirked upward, like sudden birdsong in a silent wood. “Your hands?”

In any other circumstance, he might have balked. But Thor was moving with enough conviction for them both, down now on his knees. This ragged triangle lacked one acute angle – and two pairs of eyes rose to watch him, one troubled, the other barely curious. Loki stepped forward, came down in a fluid movement that held nothing in common with the troubled rhythm of his heart.

Verðandi’s hands, whitened by the drying, flaking clay, shot out, took the left of Loki and the right of Thor. As two then they made one pair now, and even as he shuddered at the dry rasp of her not-skin against his Jötunn ridges, she yanked forward. It pulled at his shoulder, as if she had no idea of the fragility of those who were not the true immortals. And then his hand was buried wrist-deep in the clay, pressed from heel to fingertips against Thor’s own. He glanced upward, caught and held his brother’s gaze, and for a moment felt anchored again.

“Now,” she said, and she sounded amused, “you must both of you close your eyes.”

Had the instruction been anything but, he might have followed it without thought. Instead he stiffened, did not move. And then Thor smiled, palm pressed against his. Loki took a deeper breath, sighed, and gave over to the darkness.

The cold water came as a shock, washing over their hands; reflexively he grasped onto the nearest object: Thor’s hand, also buried within the smooth glutinous clay. To his shock, something hard and warm and _real_ shifted between their palms.

“Open them.”

That was the only command she gave, but in absolute tandem Loki and Thor raised their joined hands. As liquefied clay ran from their tangled fingers in soft white rivulets, she leaned back, caught herself upon her palms. A strange little smile danced upon her divine features. “So very simple, in the end,” Verðandi whispered, and above them the entire tree seemed to heave a soft and mourning breath.

Loki would never know who opened their hands first, like a lily spreading its petals to the sun. Perhaps it had been them both together. It didn’t matter. The motion gave them what they had come for: something like a seed pod, laid upon the tangle of their clay-whitened fingers.

“I would not open it,” she advised, as gentle and unshifting as the unseen sky. “It is but a facet of total reality, but it is your _reality_. You can only cage it like this but once – and so take it to your battle, and there all that was will be and become.”

It was Thor who carefully wrapped the pod in offered wide leaves before tucking it away in a pouch looped onto his belt. Loki himself knelt before the well, hands opened before him. The white over the blue seemed to mock him of what had once been. With a shudder, he pushed his hands into the pool, and let Urðr’s water wash it all away. It did not help, not when he could just but look down and catch his reflection a rippling blue in the brackish waters of the pool.

“It is time you returned home.”

Loki closed his eyes. “So you say.”

Thor’s hand closed warm about his. “And so we do.”

 

*****

 

Though Thor had managed to keep his thoughts to himself most of the way back, as Loki set about unsaddling his horse, he lingered too close for comfort. “You do not seem satisfied,” he observed. Loki’s jaw tightened, and he gave one buckle a too sharp yank. The horse protested, whinnied high and shifted in a four-step protest. But while Loki reached a hand to calm his mount, fingers light upon her muzzle, his words to Thor were clipped and almost crude in their tone.

“Forgive me for thinking that this all seemed too easy.”

Thor shook his head. Despite his idiocy, his voice at least remained low; he’d left his own horse to be tended by one of the stablehands. “Does that not then tell you that this is something we are meant to do?” he asked, one broad shoulder pressed against the stall where Loki now worked. “That the Norns have decreed this the path we walk, and so together it is all as it should be?”

“You are too much the romantic.”

“I always did enjoy the bards’ tales when they ended happily.”

“No, you enjoyed it when there was blood and war and entrails all over the floor.” With the saddle now free, Loki slung it over the side of the stall, and gave up. “And you forget, Thor, that happy endings are only for heroes.”

“How terrible then,” he said, while almost managing to sound apologetic, “that you’re going to be a hero, Loki.”

He had no answer for idiocy on such a scale. Snapping his fingers for another one of the staff to come attend to his horse, Loki then strode through the dim light of the stables: walking forward, not looking back. The hand on his arm did not stop him, did not even slow him, but it was undeniable proof that he was not alone.

“Loki.”

“I am in no mood to discuss this with you now.”

That got him a sigh. But the hand did not fall away. Instead it remained warm against his cool skin, even through the fabric of his coat.

“Of course I do this for the universe entire,” Thor said, sudden and far too cheerful. “When have you ever known me to stand in the background when there is a battle to be fought?”

Loki snorted, as if that might hide the fact he’d actually almost just laughed for the pure joy of it. “At least you didn’t add _for the lives of innocents_. I would hate to think that you truly believe it’s life and not the promise of death by way of your hammer that truly brings you to this lifestyle.”

The sharp breath Thor drew then almost made him regret what he’d said. Even though his brother’s hand did not withdraw, shame kept his eyes ahead and his own hands clenched to fists. When it came, this sigh carried a sound like autumn wind whispering through a copse of trees stripped bare of leaf and bud.

“There is no universe for me if you are not in it.”

“Yes there is.” The palace glittered before them, tall and golden and endless. “Until you found me on Jötunheimr, you were living it.”

“It was a half life.”

“It was enough.”

Thor had fallen very silent now. Even as something in Loki screamed for him to just _say something_ , a darker part of him crowed that he would not, because he did not want to. Because Loki was right. Because he did not deserve this.

_Because I should have died a thousand years ago, cast out onto that frozen rock._

“What must I do to prove myself to you?”

“Oh, Thor,” Loki said, and wondered how he could keep each footstep steady enough so that he did not fall down. “Thor, you prove everything just by existing, and you’ve known it since you could walk.”

Again, his brother was very quiet. Then, he tried again. He always tried again.

“Loki—”

“Thor.” Reaching forward, he ran his fingers light and quick over the leather pouch hung from his brother’s belt, and then quietly withdrew. “We must take this to your mortal. With any luck, she has the Vanadís and we might fit the gauntlet with all the stones save the aether.”

The word felt like a curse upon his tongue; it brought with it the memory of rising red, of pain like stone burning through his abdomen. Thor’s eyes were thankfully so very blue where they sought out and searched his own.

“And then?”

“And then I will summon Thanos.” And now he smiled, half-genuine for all the bottled up fury behind it. “I am sure Taneleer Tivan will have already surrendered the aether to him. For a price.”

“I am glad to see it amuses you.” Thor’s own attitude to the damned thing seemed much colder, but then Loki could not blame him for it – and he also treasured the conversation’s fresh turn as his brother said, “Will he really just give it up?”

“He is a collector. The end use of products is often beyond him.” In fact Tivan’s vaults had infuriated Loki; they had been more a graveyard than a museum, filled with objects and beings alike stripped of that which made them vivid and true: their _purpose_. “If he does not give it to Thanos, Thanos will simply take it. And there is little Tivan could do to stop him, even if he is the one in possession of an infinity stone. This was always the arrangement between the Titan and myself – if I could not provide it directly, then Tivan would be our intermediary. Whether Tivan himself was aware of it or not.”

Something in the twist of his brother’s features said he wanted to protest such tactics, though he was sensible enough to move beyond what had already happened. “Will Hela not protest the destruction of Sullt and Hungr?”

Loki closed his eyes, but only briefly; for a moment, he had felt the soft touch of fingers upon his brow, his cheek. “The sublimation is reversible. It’s hardly as though I propose to leave the stones in the possession of Thanos forever.”

“Because he will be dead.”

“Yes.” Then he smirked, unable to look past the flat conviction of such a statement. “Oh, is that a little bloodlust I see there, brother?”

“He did you harm.”

“Perhaps I wanted it.” And perhaps he had also been too frank. Any comfort the hand he laid upon his brother’s forearm would have been stripped away anyway by the smile that accompanied it, brittle and flaking at its sharpened edges. “Come, let us see your little lady Jane. She is a very clever little thing, after all.”

Thor protested the epithet, but said little else as Loki led them unerringly towards the little suite of guest rooms that had been set aside for her work. Jane almost seemed surprised to see them. Then her expression changed to something more harassed. Loki might have taken amusement in her futile mortal frustrations, had they not work to do.

“Do you have the Vanadís yet?”

She scowled deep enough that the expression ought to scar, but she did reach across the table for a small crystalline vial. “I feel like I should be charging you through the nose for this,” she snapped, holding it up between forefinger and thumb. “I work in research, not the private sector. I’m not used to being put on impossible stupid bloody schedules.”

His brother started, gave her a wounded look. “But you do it so well.”

“Thor, don’t start.”

Loki couldn’t contain his laughter, even when Jane snickered and Thor just looked all the more confounded by her irritation. But then he had something more important to contemplate now. Loki did not reach for it. Rather he leaned closer to Jane Foster’s newest marvel. The Vanadís had become a shimmering strange thing, caught in its plasma web, a lazy movement within the crystal vial. It had no shape to it, and yet it existed in three dimensions. It seemed very nearly tangible, if one were fool enough to try and touch it.

“Well, would you look at that,” Loki marvelled, and entirely without irony; still Jane snorted.

“No. I’ve been staring at it all day.” True enough to her word, she did not, palming the vial, she put it firmly to one side on the table without a second glance. Her gaze however, did fall to the place just below Thor’s waist where the small leather pouch still rested. “So where are the others, then?”

Somewhat to his surprise, she did not display any awe at the revelation of the reality stone. Two guards were summoned to gather the remainder from the vaults, and when they were arrayed before Loki saw Jane had become almost mechanical in her movement, her purpose. With the gauntlet opened before her like a lobster cracked open for a meal, her small hands moved quick where they slotted in the Vanadís in its crystal vial, the pod enclosing one reality, the time seeds in their glowing apple skin, the black blade of Sullt, the gleaming cube that was the tesseract. It seemed like something so momentous should take longer, but then the closer they skated to the edge the steeper the slope became: everything had been moving too fast since the moment he had let go of Gungnir and found that gravity acted in all the universe and not just where there was solid ground beneath one’s feet.

“So,” she said, and leaned back from her work.

“So,” Loki echoed, moving a hand through his hair; he grimaced to find it greasy with sweat. “Ever onward shall we go.”

Even when she blinked furiously, her blurred eyes did not seem to focus fully upon him. “What, _now_?”

“The stones are ready.”

“But…” Now she raised her hands, rubbed her eyes, then tried to catch the strands of her hair that had fallen loose from the slatternly bun she had tied it into. “It’s so late…I mean…I’ve been working all day and most of the night and I…well, you’ve been off climbing world trees, surely—”

“We do not expect your stamina to match our own,” Thor said, almost gallant; he then managed to look rather poleaxed when Jane slapped his forearm – and hard, for a mortal.

“Don’t you pull that macho alien bullshit on me.” Loki grinned, but she wasn’t even looking at him; for once he found amusement in the fact she only had eyes for his brother. “What’s the bloody hurry?” she added hotly, but it was Loki who gave a cool reply.

“Thanos will notice a shift in the energies of the universe, given the coalescence of such vast power in one place.” The pretty little features scrunched into a scowl, and Loki feigned innocent concern for her distress when he added, “But I can summon him faster.”

She didn’t even bother arguing this time. Instead Jane just let her face fall into her hands, hunched over the table like a student failing her final examinations. “Oh, _Christ_.”

Thor’s eyes were watchful upon him as Loki stepped closer to the mortal, though he made no motion to stop what he surely recognised as the light teasing Loki had so often engaged in when they were children. “He will not come himself. He will send another,” he said in false comfort. Then he tapped long fingers upon his lips, gave his brother a sideways glance. “Though it will take some time.”

Her head shot up, eyes narrowed against the sudden onslaught of light. “What, like, a couple of days?”

“The night, perhaps.” The mixture of disbelief and horror upon her face might have made him laugh, had he need been pretending at benevolence. “But you may sleep, Dr. Foster.”

“Why?” When he blinked, she crossed her arms over her chest, pursed her lips. “I mean, why just _me_? And don’t give me anymore alien physiology bullcrap, because I’m as much a part of this stupid intergalactic planetary mission to save the Nine Realms as you guys are. So what gives?”

“It is something Thor and I must do together.” He paused, then curled his tongue about the next low words as if they were fine wine. “ _Only_ Thor and I.”

Her whole body, fragile and mortal, stiffened – but her eyes, fixed upon him, held not the wide wild fear of cornered prey. Instead he saw for the first time a burgeoning understanding in that darkness: something very uncomfortable, a revelation too hard and too huge. Just as sharp as the realisation was her turn away from his open expression. But Thor’s eyes were upon Loki alone, and he did not see. The pang of pity for the girl struck him like a dagger twisted in his side, low and hurting but never meant to be fatal. Just a reminder of what was yet to come.

“What must we do?” Thor said, and Loki found he had to swallow hard at least twice before he had voice enough to speak again.

“ _You_ must come with me.” Then he turned, and his expression had become something entirely devoid of guile or spite. “I was not being facetious. Do get your sleep, Dr. Foster. I shall need you again come morning.”

_And in the night, I need only him_.

He turned away from their leavetaking – much as jealousy would never leave him, it could not hold when Thor left her to come to his side, his presence tempered storm.

This time it would not be Thor’s rooms. His quick step, near silent, led instead to those chambers that had been his own. Thor voiced no surprise when Loki pushed open the doors, warding them once closed. Loki himself had to let out a shaky breath when he took in the sight before him: the rooms remained as dusty and strange as the last time he had tried to spend the night here.

But that night no longer mattered. He had been alone then. Now he stood before his brother, who watched him with a wordless trust that fisted itself about his heart, reminding him that it actually existed. Without any words of his own, Loki stepped forward, hands rising to those broad shoulders. Knowing fingers loosened the claps of the cloak, and then Loki slipped through into the bedchamber. There, upon the stripped mattress, he spread the scarlet material as if it were a single bloodied sheet.

The quiet footsteps that followed him into the dim room had paused beyond the threshold. That alone told Loki that his brother had some inkling as to what he had planned. When he turned, however, the faint confusion had drawn a cleft between Thor’s eyebrows.

“Brother, what is this?”

Loki lowered his face, turned his hands to reveal the empty palms, the lines of his Jötunn heritage hidden by angle. For one dreadful moment he _forgot_ – and then it returned, as easy as a key turned in its matching lock. He shook it away the glamour of his true self like a dog discarding water. When he looked up, he saw through his own eyes again. Thor himself remained as clear and beautiful as the distant Asgardian sky.

And Loki, again one of the Aesir, smiled as if he’d brought down the sun itself.

“Well, seeing as you brought up last nights before battles,” he said, soft as he sidled close to slide fingers up one side, “I say we fuck until he notices.”

At first there was nothing but thunderous silence. Then, there was laughter that did not cease even when Thor’s mouth closed over Loki’s own.


	17. 3.5: Soteriology

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's probably relatively self-explanatory, given I planned this out before _Guardians of the Galaxy_ was released, but I ignore everything infinity stone related from that film. I also know nothing of Thanos from the comics so baby, I'm making this all up. Also, I am really sorry for the delay in this penultimate chapter. My brain went on the fritz, as it sometimes do. Thank you for sticking with me this far. Just one chapter and the epilogue to go.  <3

There would always be other ways to pass the time while they waited for Thanos to notice the energy shift that would indicate one of his former agents had…reactivated, in a manner of speaking. Loki doubted there would be a more interesting method than that of sex in his Aesir form. It wasn’t even just because such physicality always had been a reliable method of amplifying and sharpening his seiðr, when necessary.

Its drawbacks still hung over his head like a guillotine’s suspended blade – because returning to the form thrust upon him as an infant now rendered him again Loki _Odinson_ , not Loki Laufeyson. Given the person he wished to fuck shared the same patronymic, things could never be simple. Especially when every other time they’d fucked, Loki had not worn the true face of _Thor’s little brother_.

But then it was a minor miracle he could actually ruminate upon such matters, between the burn of seiðr beneath his skin and Thor’s lips upon his own. They demanded as much in return as they gave – and they gave endlessly. The hands upon his clothing managed to be nearly as insistent, tangling in laces and buckles and the tight fit of worked leather. Yet as suddenly as they had become frantic, they stilled.

Dread formed a hard pit in the bottom of Loki’s stomach, though it promised the potential to explode in short enough order. Still Loki kept it to himself as Thor took his shoulders, gently guided him back until he sat upon the very edge of the bed. His hands moved to support himself, fingers clutching about the crimson of the cape there. His eyes never left Thor’s – and his brother’s were dark, pupils blown wide. But there was reason there, thought. And Loki forced a cool smile even as he felt something break inside of him.

_You fool, you_ knew _this was not for you—_

“Much I want to know you now,” Thor said, soft as the hands that moved to rest upon his knees, gentling them apart as he moved forward, “there is something I must ask you first.”

Loki gritted his teeth behind his smile. His brother had always been a dreadful tease, when they’d been children; it only made sense he’d be the same in this most adult of pursuits. He wanted to kick him away, to drop the pretence if there was no hope of such intimacy when he wore his true self. “No, there isn’t a cunt,” he replied, tart and challenging even in his discomfort. “You’ll have to make do with whatever other holes you can find.”

There was more, or at least there might have been. Thor rose, one hand closing over his mouth, warm and gentle and too large for the delicacy of its movement. His own smile had become lopsided, serious behind its silliness. “We haven’t made a plan for what we shall do when we engage Thanos.”

Even though his stomach dropped, twisting in its misery, Loki rolled his eyes as Thor’s hand fell away. “Speak for yourself.”

Yet Thor’s fingers rose to work again at his armour while he straightened again to full height, one eyebrow raised as Loki reclined back on the stripped mattress. “Are you going to share?” he prompted at Loki’s silence, and the returned scowl he earned had the dire threat of declared war.

“Aren’t you going to trust me?”

“You know I would _like_ to,” he returned, just as smartly if without the snideness, and Loki lunged forward, cracking open Thor’s armour like a shell.

“Thor.” The tremor in his voice could have been excused as annoyance. He scowled deeper, tugged harder. “ _Summoning_.”

“Loki.” His hands closed over Loki’s wrists: not hard, but as unyielding as the blue plasma of his eyes. “Strategising.”

“ _Norns_.” Sitting back once more, Loki tangled his fingers about one another; it at least kept them from digging into the tender flesh of his brother’s exposed throat. Then he cleared his own, voice far steadier than his chaotic thoughts. “I am going to ask of him a boon, before we give to him the other stones.”

“A boon.” Thor’s generous lips curved around the words, brow furrowed deep. He had ceased to undress, undershirt hanging open just enough to reveal the golden skin of his chest. Loki tightened his hands even as they they itched to be palm-down on that flesh, demanding and caressing alike.

But he bit down on his desire, still unable to be sure it would even be returned. “In order that we not interfere with his plans,” he elaborated, mouth twisted; the roil of his seiðr gnawed at his flesh, as unrelenting as his unease. “Given this gift, we will leave him to his own work and return home, sworn to remain neutral even if our aid is begged for.”

Before he spoke, Thor wetted dry lips. Something very wary lurked just visible behind his opened eyes. “But you do not mean it.”

“Of course I do not mean it,” Loki snapped, and now his hands rose, began to tug hard at the laces and buckles which held his own leathers twisted cocoon-like about his body. “It is simple: the gauntlet allows the power of each stone to be filtered, amplified and reduced in order that the one who bears them all is not overwhelmed by their individual or collective power.” Though he knew well the mechanics of his own clothing, Loki kept his eyes firmly fixed on his work as he continued to speak. “Not that they might be wielded by anyone who is not of near-divine strength even with the buffer of the gauntlet’s restraints between the user and the stones themselves.”

“I see.”

He looked up, schooling a thin smile upon tight features. “The boon I will ask of Thanos requires the energy of but one of the stones. However, I will have calibrated the gauntlet so that while he believes the other five to be suppressed, they will in fact be loosed at full strength.”

“And this will kill him.”

A shiver of longing utterly unlike his frustrated desire rocked Loki to his core. But he just drew a deep breath, and shrugged away his surcoat. “It could sufficiently surprise and weaken him so that he might be, perhaps.” He flexed his fingers as he tossed the clothing aside, hissed in a breath at the brief spark of seiðr from his fingertips. “But if you’ll remember our little sojourn on Svartálfaheimr, nothing is guaranteed when it comes to the stones. And Thanos is a Titan, beloved of Death – he will not go easy into that dark night.”

The shed undershirt sailed across the room, frustration writ in every tense curve and line of the muscle revealed by its absence. “So if we cannot end him, then what is the _point_?”

With a faint snort, Loki shed his own upper clothing, stood as he moved his hands to his belts. “So little vision, for an Asgardian born and bred,” he murmured, and shook his hair out of his eyes with impatient annoyance. “We can subdue him for long enough that he becomes someone else’s problem.”

“Our children’s?”

The demand startled him to stillness, hands motionless over buttons and buckles. “Thor—”

And Thor himself shook his head, one hand rising to push back his own mane of unruly hair. Then he stepped closer, hands on his upper arms and guiding him down to sit once more upon the edge of the mattress. Resting between his brother’s opened knees, Thor frowned, looked up to him like a penitent seeking the blessing of his gods. “Loki, I _do_ understand what you are trying to achieve, I truly do,” he said, and the earnestness of his handsome face sparked along Loki’s skin with electric heat. “But if the opportunity arises and I might destroy him entire, then I will do it – and without regret.”

Loki’s returned scowl could have torn galaxies apart. “Of course you will. Why would I expect anything else from _you_?”

The smile held the easy curve of a rocking cradle, as simple and soft as any lullaby. Yet the strength of him was undeniable where one hand rose, passed gentle over his hair in a fashion so familiar to childhood. Soft though the gesture was, where his fingers curled about his neck, Loki knew the might coiled within. The shiver that ran down his spine now felt like a thousand fingers falling to converge where he might feel it most. And then, like a cat with a wayward kitten, Thor shook him at the neck, just a little.

“Did you really mean not to tell me what you planned?” Beneath the amusement there lurked a true thread of apprehensiveness. “To just take me into the fight as your berserker warrior beast?”

Loki sighed, rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “There would have been time, after.”

“But I am very single-minded, when I set myself to a task.”

His palms had dropped to his thighs, and there the long fingers spread wide even as they gentled Loki’s legs further apart, insinuating himself closer to an unspoken goal. Again Loki’s seiðr hummed bright in his veins, the plasma discharge of lightning across a summer sky, and he swallowed hard. “As I said to your mortal—”

“Her name is _Jane_ , Loki.”

“—a messenger of Thanos will come when he notes my return to the waking world. But it will not be immediate.” Leaning forward from the hips, he worked his lips close to one ear, scenting upon him a desire that made him as weak as it did strong. “It will come _after_ the show.”

“I think you have no real idea of my stamina.”

Laughter roiled somewhere in his gut, but it was seiðr that rippled through him now as Loki shifted forward, thighs falling wider still as he reached between them. “Yes, but I am more than passingly familiar with your fat head.” The questing hand dipped low, lips against lips as Loki cupped the stirring hardness against his brother’s thigh. “There is always time.”

“There is not.” And despite the evidence of desire held in Loki’s hand, Thor’s face wore nothing but soft regret as he rested his own hand upon his face. “As I well know,” he added, a soft murmur that still landed like a blow, and Loki turned his face away.

“I thought we were going to fuck, not dwell upon matters past.”

With the melancholy of the sun slipping behind a cloud, Thor drew back. All warmth fled with him, leaving Loki cold even as Thor said, gentle, “If you do not wish to do this now, Loki, I will not ask it of you.”

For a moment he did not even quite realise what had happened, for all he had expected it from the beginning. Then it hit him, and so hard that for the first syllables, Loki could only gasp for air. “Oh. _Oh_.” And then he laughed, a crackling hard sound like land after endless drought. “And at the first opportunity, he surrenders! How very wonderful.”

Thor’s expression could have been comically confused, if not for the situation he wore it to. “What?”

Loki’s hands dug deep into the clenched muscles of his thighs, the accompanying smile a teeth-riddled grimace. “I knew you could not go through with it.”

Thor, still upon his knees, stared upward. The dawn of understanding came sudden over his features, and almost immediately he rose, turned away. Loki held his own ground, sitting still and alone upon his stripped bed, as his brother crossed to the other side of the chamber. Standing at the window, he might have been staring across the world to the realms beyond – but the glass was shuttered and dark, and there was nothing there at all.

“Do you really believe me so fickle, that I would turn from you in this form?”

Thor had not turned to face his brother, but the hurt of those words spilled from him like arterial blood, hot and harsh and scented of war. “Surely it would be easier for you to fuck me if I’m not in the body of your little brother?” Loki snarled, and his seiðr echoed him with a shuddering spark through the air itself. Fingers clenched, ready to coil themselves about skin and hair and throat.

No answering blow came to answer his challenge. “But I _want_ to fuck my little brother,” he said, almost plaintive – and when he turned, Thor wore the brightest, most ridiculous grin. The apology in it couldn’t hold a candle to the wry joy it was principally made of. “Don’t look so horrified, Loki. Norns know you want to fuck your older one.”

Loki had always loathed his traitorous eyes and their habit of giving in to tears even when he fought them back with a strength that could have ended a thousand worlds. Wondering, amazed, something even close to miserable, he buried his face in his hands and breathed stuttering and deep. “Arrogant sod.”

He’d come too close, too quick; his voice came too him so near, laughing and soft. “I always figured that was part of my charm.”

“I believe that’s a figment of your imagination,” Loki parried with swift scorn, but then it didn’t matter. Thor’s hands were upon him again, and now Loki was content to believe nothing would stop them until they both knew something nearer to satisfaction than he’d ever believed possible.

It had been a long time since he’d helped his brother out of his armour – or into it. Thinking in such a fashion resurrected the faint memory of days before a coronation. Another moment, and they were pushed hastily away. They came from another life. Said life could have been his once, perhaps, but no longer. This was his now. And he would take hold of it with both hands.

There were scarce few items of clothing left to remove between them, and then Loki lay upon his back, head lolling back as callused hands slid scrape-sweet over his thighs where they spread open. Something slow and reverent thudded like a heartbeat in the gaze that moved over his skin, heated and hard, but Thor had never been one to pause for long. With that wretched bright grin Thor dipped his head and then a thick tongue dragged along the shaft, dipping low to curve about the balls beneath.

Loki lurched upward, one hand swatting at that golden crowned head. “Watch your _teeth_!”

Startled, Thor looked up; his lips shone with saliva and pre-spend alike. “What?” he asked, bemused and bewildered, and Loki pulled himself into a more upright position.

“Have you never done this before?” he demanded, and Thor blinked. And then again. And then one more time before his eyes skipped sideways, chin coming to rest upon the mattress. His expression was entirely too like the wide eyes of a chastised puppy.

“I…well. A little. With you.”

“Oh, for…” Loki flopped down onto his back again, knees splayed wide. “Just keep your teeth behind your lips. That’s all I ask.”

Though Thor showed some understanding when he returned to his self-suggested task, Loki found it to be not quite as expected. The warmth of his mouth was welcoming, but not quite encompassing enough; Thor lacked experience enough to take the shaft very deep at all. And though the pressure of his tongue, teasing and twisting about the head and the skin beneath, was welcome enough, he still did not quite know how best to sheath his damned teeth.

Loki pulled back again, eyes wild. “If you cannot manage to listen to instruction, then I shall _show_ you how it is done,” he snapped, and for a moment Thor’s startled expression brought everything again to standstill. Then his laughter broke loose, rumbling like brontide low in his chest.

“ _Norns_ ,” Loki muttered. Then he crawled up over him, twisted around as his cock dangled between his legs. Thor laid now beneath him, his own flushed cock before Loki’s pursed lips. But first he pressed a kiss to his thighs: the power of them made him tremble, knowing their strength and how they could crush about him. They provided distraction enough from everything else, certainly; ignoring Thor’s dick entirely, Loki instead pressed his nose into the crease between groin and thigh. His cheek dragged light over the dusting of hair, not as coarse as that of his beard, but enough to send a tingle of longing sensation through him.

Broad hands came to rest upon his waist, steadying himself as much as Loki; he had to smirk to see the tremor of thick muscle beneath the golden skin before him.

“Tease.”

“Yes, yes.” Impatient, Loki pressed a kiss to the soft skin of the inside of one thigh; the cock gave an interested twitch above, and Thor’s broad chest shook with barely withheld laughter. It left Loki with the sudden longing to lick his long fingers, dip them low, press between the firm muscle of twinned buttock and find that grasping ring he so well remembered wrapped about his prick. But instead he pulled his hair back with one hand, and set to a new task entire.

Beneath him, Thor rose and fell like the sea rocked to storm; his skin crackled with static charge, the pale hair dusted across his golden skin standing on end. Loki ran his hands over thigh, abdomen, letting his own hair fall forward to tickle at his brother’s skin until he convulsed with both desire and ticklish delight. But even with his brother so at mercy beneath him, Loki soon enough raised his head, looked back beneath one shoulder to the dazed face behind him.

“Are you not going to get back to your own work?” he asked, unable to hide the peevish note even when half-hoarse from sucking on a cock. Thor, hazed, blinked some sense back into his eyes, then frowned. Then he shifted, generous lips pursing even as Loki wanted nothing more than for them to be pressed to his skin and his entrance and then anywhere else Thor might consider.

“I…I just wonder.” Wide-palmed hands rose, cupped his arse between them; even as Loki arched his back inward, cock bobbing against his own flat stomach, Thor’s voice had turned entirely too contemplative. “Is it the same? Like this?”

“What, sex? It’s similar enough. I thought we weren’t discussing this.”

“Not _discussing_.” For the first time he appeared uncomfortable, almost like a fidgety child for all he was nude and glorious and aroused. “I just…the lightning.” Loki’s eyebrows moved close to one another, and all in a rush Thor blurted out: “Would you _like_ it? Like this?”

His own re-loosed seiðr twinged through him, fire and ice in both blood and bone, and Loki didn’t bother to suppress a shiver. “It won’t be the same,” he admitted, and swallowed hard. “But then, it’s you. It’s always been _you_.”

And he bent his own head back to his task, unable to meet his brother’s eyes. The weight of Thor’s cock between his lips again came heavy and welcome. A moment later and he gaped around the gagging shaft, for his brother had raised his head and pressed lips between his buttocks. The tip of his tongue slyly flicked out to just rim the tensed muscles of his entrance.

One hand rested upon his hip, palm cupping while the splayed fingers held him steady; the other came around his cock, tight and trusting. The shivering sensation of ionised air had Loki gasping, even as he lost more breath by sucking Thor deeper into his throat. No, it could never be the same now as it had been in his Jötunn form – that cursed skin had its little ways of taking such electrical sensation and amplifying it. This had become something else entirely: as if Thor had made himself over to pure plasma energy and then shifted beneath his brother’s skin. As if Thor sought only to become one with him, _part_ of Loki’s very self.

Knowing that now, Loki wished to leap backward, to find his feet and run across the universe until Thor and Asgard and everything of his past and present was gone from his reach. Instead Loki took Thor deeper yet, half-gagging on the head that brushed the back of his throat. Thor gasped into his ass and Loki smiled even through the sudden pain. There was no going back. There was only harder, faster, always _more_.

“No.” Thor had pulled back from his ass with a great shuddering cry; it left his demand rough-voiced and harsh. “ _No_. Not yet. I want it to be in you.”

And Loki pulled one leg upward, swung his whole body over until he fell upon his back; drawing up his knees, he reached down and pulled on his own cock. His seiðr hummed as it met with the remnants of lightning Thor had left upon his skin, the sensation sharp and sensuous. “Demanding, aren’t you?” he asked, lazy. Thor had risen to his knees, cock red and thick where it bobbed against the swift twitch of the muscles in his abdomen.

“Yes.” The feral growl that accompanied the words was that of the beast who would always turn his hunter to prey. “So come on. Get ready.”

With a hand that trembled, Loki reached for the unguent he favoured for such. Thor’s hand closed sudden about his cock. With a gasp Loki’s whole body went rigid, and then he let out a long, keening breath. With the sound gone, his throat still worked as if searching for a scream. Then, he managed a thin and gasping: “ _Thor_ —”

“Shhh.” But for all the attempted comfort of the sound, his eyes sparkled with warm mischief. “This will make it easier. Believe me.”

Much as the sensible part of him wanted to snark back that having been fucked up the arse just the once hardly made Thor more of an authority on the subject than Loki, pleasure blurred every other thought but the desire to reach out for its pinnacle. Thor’s callused fingers, all too knowing in this, worked against the shaft in twisting rise, the tips flicking over the head and the skin just beneath. When the hand dipped low, the flat of his palm _just_ caressed over the skin of his balls, and then it rose again in sparking sensual slide.

Loki dug his fingers hard into the thighs spread either side of his own, throat bared as he rocked his head back and forth; it might not shake free the darkness inherent to his mind, but in this moment he knew nothing but the power and force and _brightness_ of an oncoming storm of light. And then an inadvertent graze of ragged nails along the shaft bucked his hips upward and his head back and the clouds _broke_ ; his pleasure ripped itself from his throat even as it worked through every inch of his body. His seiðr sang in turn, resonating through his body and his mind and his soul alike, as sudden and free as a loosed hurricane whipped to full force.

After, Loki could only lie boneless and breathing hard. His eyes stayed wide open, every inch of his skin dancing with unseen current. In his darkest heart he knew he could not have hoped to rise even when Thor’s fingers moved with ragged purpose, sliding between, working inwards.

With scarcely any strength left to his name, whichever he might choose in this moment, Loki knew he could be excused for merely letting his brother do what he wished. But he marshalled just enough strength to roll over, not bothering to hide his hiss at the drag of over-sensitised flesh on the crimson fabric of his brother’s cloak. A moment later Thor’s hands moved about his hips, yanked him back, and the second of flaring pain that turned to pleasure thrummed though him with something dangerously close to renewed desire.

Fisting his hands in the cloak, Loki did not leave Thor to take his own pleasure without price. With a gasp and then a grin, Loki worked his hips in rolling motion, pushing back and pulling forward. Chasing him at every step, Thor’s breath came almost as hard as the grip of his fingers; they left an epic penned in bruise and raked scratch along the white canvas of his Aesir skin.

Then, sudden as fine-sky thunder, Thor came down hard over him. Enveloped in those broad arms and shoulders and chest, Loki could scarce catch a breath, let alone move. With a great groan of pleasure Thor then cast his weight backward, pulling Loki with him so that he lay upon his brother’s chest. With no real angle for leverage, Loki could do little to move himself – but then it didn’t matter. One broad hand wrapped around a thigh, pulled it up hard. With the movement opening him wider, it only gave Thor deeper access. And he took it hard, wrapping the other hand about Loki’s neck in a reverse parody of his usual gesture as his hips slammed hard upward.

Loki’s back arched. One hand scrabbled for his cock, grabbed too hard when it found its target; he howled even as Thor drove deeper still. A moment later teeth closed over the skin stretched tight over ribcage and chest, and Loki could do little more than writhe upon Thor’s heaving chest. With his own spine arched acute, it left him scarcely able to catch a breath. Every inch of him ached, too soon to climax again but Loki could feel it coming all the same. With easy vindictiveness he clenched tight about his brother, was rewarded with the harsh dig of fingers into his throat. There would be more bruises after, a gifted necklace of need and obsessive desire. But then Loki did not care. His brother’s furious first climax crashed over him with the impossible pleasure of his own second, and not a whit else mattered.

Pleasure gave way so swift to drowsiness, leaving them lying together upon the ruined cape in tangled twists of limb and body. Every inch of his skin, even as it sparked yet for joy at the return of his Aesir self, felt disgusting in its sheen of drying sweat and spill. Loki still could not bring himself to move, could not be sure it was even possible, wrapped as he was in his brother’s possessive grasp.

And beside him Thor stirred, nose pressed deep into the tangle of his hair when he whispered, “Loki.”

“Yes?”

“What boon will you ask of him?”

Even in this post-coital languid laze, Loki’s entire body stiffened. With eyes fixed upon the ceiling, revealed only by the missing canopy that had once hung there, he spoke slow and sure and strange. “Mother.” And his mouth twitched, but still managed to bear no true smile. “I want her back.”

Though he had never been one for words, even Loki was surprised when Thor said not a word in return. Then, his arms moved to hold him only tighter. Loki closed his eyes, and sighed.

Though he could not strictly hear it, catching its sound more by the sensed movement of fingertips, Loki counted the beat of Thor’s heart until his brother’s breathing evened out. For long moments Loki just let him sleep, staring again to the sweeping mural overhead. It had been carved from the polished wood of a tree great enough to encompass the whole area of the ceiling in his youth. The master artist’s face had been so grave and so curious where the child-prince had asked so specifically for scenes taken from edda and favoured song.

The balcony beckoned him from its near distance. Loki rose, disentangling himself with deceptive ease from his brother’s grasping hands. With a cloth taken from the basin at his bedside, Loki swiped over his face, then briefly the worst of other areas, before discarding it to an otherwise empty basket. Modesty dictated that he take a robe and sweep it about his shoulders, but he did not. His body ached with every step away, bearing bright the reminders of having been held so close in body and in soul.

Somehow the night had very nearly gone. Loki frowned against the rise of the sun, the glittering path of stars across the sky that it cast into obscurity with its coming. With fingers tight about the balustrade, he raised his face, let the light take him. It was not yet bright enough to blind, but still he felt his eyes fill with saltwater, protective and mourning alike.

It came as no real surprise when he felt the presence come up behind him. As always it was too large, too warm to be ignored. Loki kept his eyes forward all the same. The water of the distant ocean sighed in the distance, heavy beneath the mantle of starlight it still just barely wore so close to dawn.

“Take your rest while you can, Odinson.”

The coldness of the words failed with the sudden slap of one palm to his ass. Startled, Loki whipped around, fixed his brother with a murderous glare. And still Thor wore a grin far too wide for so early in the morning. Especially when so little sleep had been taken the night previous.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, cheerful to a fault, and Loki wondered how it was that their mother had never run away to Vanaheimr to escape the idiocy of her eldest son.

“Are you planning on taking this seriously?”

He blinked. “Always.” And then his head tilted to one side, and even in its tangled mess his hair was a glittering crown of gold in the rising sun. “But we are not on a battlefield here.”

“It’s always a battlefield for you and I.”

“Oh, don’t start.” Loki’s mouth opened wide to protest that, but all words were quite cut off by the way Thor’s arms closed around him. The great body, still warm from bed and then just from its own innate heat, pressed very close to his. The naked skin sparked against his own, as if by their very nearness they could not help but generate a charge between them.

And Thor’s lips nuzzled very close to one ear, his tongue flicking like over one earlobe before pressing it lightly between his teeth. “We can fight later,” he whispered, having let it go; Loki snorted, one hand reaching low and behind to flick lightly at the rising hardness he found there before returning forward.

“What, and we’ll fuck now?”

“I thought a philosophical discussion through the sunrise when I first saw you out here, but I will not deny the other appeals.” One warm hand closed over his ass, pressing down where it tingled yet from the slap earlier. “Would you agree?”

His hands tightened over the railings. Thor’s arms had dipped to hold him loose about his waist, drawing him back from the edge. Loki hadn’t even realised he’d been looking down until Thor’s face nuzzled into his throat, beard scratching the delicate skin there.

“Morning will come of its own accord.” And he pressed two kisses, heartbeat-rhythm, to the jumping pulse in his brother’s throat. “Stay with me. Come back to bed.”

“No.” Stubbornness had always come so easy to the House of Odin. “I want to see it.”

The sun’s rise continued, laid out before him like a shifting oil canvas – but Loki did not move from the circle of Thor’s arms. His brother took it as an invitation that Loki could not be sure he had not tendered. The kisses laid to his skin came soft like summer rain; within moments his own hand stole upward, pressing the chin up and towards him.

Thor came willingly, Loki’s body pressing back against his in easy invitation. Already Loki could feel the curious heat of a hardening cock slipping between the cheeks of his ass. It remained just slick enough from their earlier exertions, and with a sigh, Loki turned his head, and caught Thor’s lips in his own.

            The gentle sway of hips grew bolder, rocking together as flesh stiffened and breath grew short and sharper. The clean, sweet warmth of the rising sun caressed his Aesir skin like an old lover as the new took him to greater heat yet. With one hand pressed about the back of his head, Loki drew Thor always closer, mouths exploring, as languid as the breaths they caught in between. Thor’s right hand dropped, came forward to find Loki’s cock rising. Lazy, it moved to cajole it further upward, fingers brushing light over the balls beneath. Behind, Loki could feel the press of Thor’s own cock against his hole, still swollen and soft from before.

The gentle weight of one hand rested upon Loki’s waist, and then: the press of the head of his cock came harder. Yet the movement was not asking for entrance. It dipped lower, seeking between his legs instead; halfway in, it grazed over the perineum. With a sigh, Loki allowed an opening of his thighs. And then followed a closing. There Loki held Thor tight even where he began to thrust, slow and simple.

Leaning his full weight back against him came too easy, here on the edge of everything. The wet of kisses taken and given mattered more, tongues speaking without sound. A chuckle so easily became a gasp, and then back again; Loki’s own hand moved down to tangle with Thor’s about his cock. He did not linger, playing fingertips down the shaft, over the balls – and there he found the damp head of the cock slipping through his thighs. For a moment Thor paused, let Loki cradle it there. His fingers moved as it did not, slipping over the slick of it, catching just lightly under the glans.

With a groan, Thor’s hips snapped again to a quickening pace. Loki gave up on the kisses to lay his head back upon a broad shoulder, gasping for air he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted. Asgard glittered below, the city able to watch its princes at sin if only they looked upward. And he did not care. All he needed was in his grasp, and the cock between his thighs spilled over. Catching it, Loki rubbed it over his own, called forth the same even as Thor showed him the way home.

Though Thor held him tight afterward, he loosened his grasp enough to allow Loki to turn. He could not walk away from this. He had no strength but that required to reach for him, and hold on tight.

And the ravens on the balustrade, eyes dark and watchful, shrilled their cries as if they’d circled a distant battlefield and found it naked of its greatest warriors.

Loki closed his eyes, cursed them and their master alike. “I do believe the message has arrived,” he muttered, and Thor’s heart never once missed a beat even as Loki at last drew away.

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But there is one place I must visit before we go together to the Observatory.”

Something low twisted in his gut. Only the skill of a thousand years kept his voice even, that of a person who has no care for what others might whisper behind their back. “Oh.”

But Thor had learned to see straight through him. “I must speak with Jane,” he said, and without apology; his expression remained considering all the same. “She cannot stay here.”

Loki’s smile cut into his own heart with the harshness of an unsharpened blade. “No, she cannot.”

“Much as I would hope she would be safe here in Asgard, Father has made it…difficult.” Running a hand through his sweat-stained hair, Thor grimaced. “On Midgard, she is amongst friends. She is home. She has her science. She is not the type of woman to be hidden away in a gilded castle.”

“Must you sing her praises to me?”

The sharpness of those words was meant to hurt him, but it cut the wrong way – instead of bleeding anger, Thor’s expression seeped betrayal. “Loki, _please_.”

And he turned away, heartsick and furious, though it was his own self he wished to wrap his fingers about the throat of and strangle into silence. Behind him, Thor let out a soft sigh. Loki could hear his weight shifting from one foot to the other. His fingers clenched deeper into his palms.

“I will go to her, and have her taken to Heimdall.” The cadence of his voice was gentle, a distant receding brontide. “Then I shall return, and you and I shall go together.”

“Of course.”

At the sword-point of such words, again Thor paused, and when he spoke every word was as carefully chosen as any movement he might make in a duel or upon a battlefield. “Loki, this isn’t about me.” He took one step closer, and Loki only half-turned. Thor went on, relentless as he was gentle. “It’s about _Jane_. For all that did and did not pass between us, I owe her this much at least. A moment between us alone, to say our goodbyes.”

And even as his body ached with the pleasure and passion pressed upon it by Thor’s own mad desire, Loki choked on any answer, unable to speak.

“But if you wish, you may come.” One hand hovered above his shoulder, uncertain. Then it fell, like the pitter-patter of spring rain. “I will not deny you that, if that is what it will take to prove to you that this is not just some…passing whim or fancy.”

His lips twisted about the single word. “Go.”

“Loki—”

“ _Go_.” And Loki turned upon him, lips hard and demanding where they snatched up Thor’s in a brutal kiss. It grew fiercer with every passing moment, one hand dragging through his hair as he pulled them so closer together his teeth caught on tongue and lip alike. When Loki dropped it, golden threads tangled his pale fingers where they clenched into fists. “I will bathe and dress and then I will be ready. Do not make me wait for you.”

Even with the daze of the kiss still upon him, Thor’s eyes flickered with stubborn thunder. “Never,” he said, rough and low-voiced, a warrior calling down war upon the worlds. And then he grinned. “Impatient little sod that you are.”

And even though Loki didn’t give it out aloud, laughter trailed after his disappearing brother like dustmotes dancing upon the sunlit air.

 

*****

 

Heimdall’s golden eyes rested upon him like the weight of accusation. Though Loki had purposely healed the discomforts of their physicalities before leaving the bedchamber, he shifted uneasily beneath the gatekeeper’s gaze; such movement sent a sharp twinge through his lower body where it had exerted itself beyond limits he hadn’t known they could break. Yet his brother’s hand was light upon his shoulder. Of course Thor charmed as ever, in full gleaming battle armour with Mjölnir hung from one hip.

“Heimdall.” He spoke as a friend, a comrade: low and easy, his grin wide enough for comfort but not for cockiness. “We wish to go to the Sanctuary, domain of Thanos.”

“Are you prepared for what must happen in that cursed place?”

Something of the flatness of that question took a little of the shine off Thor; his smile dimmed as one hand moved to lay flat about the spelled satchel at his other hip. Though its interior held more space than its exterior belied, it could do nothing for the weight of the thing – physical or otherwise. Thor had only briefly let Loki hold it: the mortal had done her work, at least. Five of the stones rested in its mutable exoskeleton, dampened just enough for their transport. But when some fool put the thing on, it would consume them.

Sudden longing hit him hard. Loki thrust it back down, nails digging into the flesh of his palms. His own smile felt pasted on, a grimace that bared teeth and only just passed for sane.

“We are ready.”

Those golden eyes had as much power as the dark curiosity of the Allfather’s bloody ravens. Loki tilted his chin high, did not look away. In this moment he wore the green and black leathers of the second Prince of Asgard, sharpened and shining daggers and knives secreted about his person; beneath their metal hummed ever present seiðr, quiescent and watchful. Heimdall blinked, just once. Then he turned and the portal opened, and but a moment later: they were gone.

The familiarity of the air he breathed next raised bile in his throat, clenched hard enough around his stomach that he nearly doubled over in the agony of it. Instead Loki gritted his teeth, straightened his back, and breathed deep and darkly. Though it was enough to sustain life, the air still remained thin enough to remind one how death lingered in the presence of this Titan. A childish part of him wanted to reach for his brother’s hand, hold it tight. Loki did not do it. He turned to face the motionless figure at their left, mouth curved into a bladed smile.

“There you are.” Tilting his head, one finger tapping his lower lip, he added with casual carelessness: “Slithered fresh from your hole, I see.”

“As you have climbed out of the pit they rightfully cast you into,” it observed, hissed through the crystalline ruin of what one might only assume were teeth. Thor’s sudden indrawn breath came too sudden to catch. The creature swivelled its hooded eyes to him with almost canine curiosity; when it smiled, it was as if the world was rotting right along with every word it spoke.

“This one is interesting.” The gurgle of dark laughter beneath the words told Loki without a doubt that it had recognised him, for all it then added, arch and asinine: “A gift for your master, perhaps?”

“A guest.” Jagged edges of something he didn’t even realise had been broken pressed against his heart with every beat it took, but Loki’s expression remained as stone. “I have something more interesting indeed for Thanos.”

“Ah, yes. A debt to repay.” It slithered half a step forward; between the robes and its motion, Loki had never quite determined if it were bipedal or simply serpentine below the waist. And it titled its head, hidden eyes still projecting a mirthful condemnation. “Though is your tesseract really enough now?”

“Perhaps five others would be enough?” And his hand rested light at the leather pouch upon his brother’s hip, voice turning dark on its ugly command. “Tell your master I am come.”

“Come crawling home,” it corrected, careless; Loki’s temper kindled, its edges too sharp to blunt with false diplomacy. But then it raised one hand, strange-fingered and fishbelly white; it passed over his shoulder as the creature gave another little chuckling laugh. “I will tell him.”

Loki could not help but flinch away even though the touch did not land. Thor, stirring from the respectful but still defensive distance he had assumed without request, stepped forward.

“Did this creature bring you harm?” he asked, mild; Loki’s grin burned into his skin as it branded there, and he fixed his eyes upon the Other alone.

“I am not some defenceless child, and if it were but a matter of physical strength this wretched thing would be long dead.” His own mind turned over, uneasy with the memory of agony and humiliation beneath that grasping touch, and his voice grew rough. “Yet it chooses to rifle through the thoughts of strangers as if they were as secret as the undergarments of a whore.”

“I only enter where I am invited.” Amused, as always, it moved closer yet. “Do you forget the bargain you made, Asgardian?”

“Does it appear to you that I have?”

The shoulders, thin beneath the flow of its robes, moved in uncaring acknowledgment. “So long have you been gone.”

“I have come to repay you for everything that you have done to me.” Loki leaned forward, smile vanished, eyes dark as the Void he knew better than any creature born to servitude and subjugation. “Touch me again. I dare you.”

And it reared close; even as Thor moved forward Loki shoved him back, eyes alone for this wretched secondary gatekeeper. “Nothing but a quivering child,” it sneered, its temper flaring as sudden as a candle-splutter. “You came on your knees, you begged on your knees! And now you return, believing yourself welcome. You are but an infant in the eyes of a Titan – and you will leave on your knees, begging for your life.”

“Ah, but you will not,” Loki observed, almost kind in his sudden clarifying stillness. “For you will be dead.”

The joy of it sung the creature’s dirge in his roused blood: hot and furious and swift and perfect. There were those who said always that Loki Liesmith cared only for his words and his tricks, but then they could not know the pleasure he found in this, in surrendering to vicious motion and its fatal end.

The blade slipped from one vambrace so its hilt fitted to palm in one half-second, his body already twisting left before brutally swinging right in a backhanded slice. Dark blood gouted free of the gaping throat but Loki had already stepped lightly clear, blade swathed in a cloth before disappearing back into his leathers. It had not had time to speak before it collapsed to knees, then side – but then with its vocal cords hanging loose from its throat, it could never slither loose its lies from between lips again.

A scarce heartbeat passed and his brother pressed close at his side. The words Thor spoke came urgent and low, but they held the even observation of a soldier born to battlefield.

“Was this wise?”

Loki turned a broad grin on him, tasting the sweetness of spilled blood even though he’d not got so much of a drop upon skin or clothing. “Whoever said I was wise?”

The deep blue of Thor’s eyes shuttered, very sudden and very swift. Then he blinked, and it was gone; shaking his head, he stepped back from the Other, mouth twisted in a moue of distaste. While his brother had little squeamishness about violent death, Loki could see the unexpected nature of this one troubled him.

And then it did not matter. “Ah, Loki.” The voice rumbled through the thin generated atmosphere of the asteroid, echoing from unseen limits. “I had thought you dead.”

Not bothering with the façade of either scorn or a smile, Loki turned his back upon the fresh corpse and faced the approaching Titan. Only by locking his knees did he resist the urge to capitulate to the broad figure’s commanding aura, one that had always demanded deference of lesser beings. But Loki’s head remained high, one eyebrow rising to match.

“You would not be the first,” he challenged, slick and easy as mercury.

“But shall I then be the last?” Yet he hardly sounded interested, his attention turning instead to the fallen creature. Regarding it with his too-bright gaze, he appeared nothing if not mildly exasperated. “I was rather fond of that particular servant.”

“I cannot imagine why.”

Even as Thor kept close to his side, Loki still shuddered at the full force of the Titan’s searching gaze upon him. “It did tend to do what it said he would. Exactly as it promised.” One hand, secure in the thick dark armour, rose to twist thoughtlessly in a half-arc about his broad form. “Perhaps not as literal as one might find some of the lesser species scattered about the galaxies, but it was useful enough.”

“What care have you for one servant, when I have done what none of your subordinates might ever have achieved?”

The watchful gaze suggested Thanos saw Loki as but another of those, and the fury of it broke in his chest, ground itself against his heart with every beat. “So, you collected them all,” he drawled, and his languid voice almost lent itself a vague curiosity. “And from only your Nine Realms, I hear. They do travel, the infinity stones – they were scattered to the universe entire, of course. But how like the Asgardians to be so greedy as to hoard them all to their own breast.” With another dismissive wave, Thanos turned back to his throne; it awaited him in the distance, balanced upon air in impossible grandeur. He took his place there even as Loki trailed him with teeth clenched, and when he regarded them both he all but rolled his eyes with his voice alone. “Always so very full of their self-importance, the Aesir. How pleased I was to have _you_ fall into my service, furious and flighty as you are.”

Loki’s gritted jaw still didn’t manage to ruin the usual melodious tone of his most diplomatic stance. “The pleasure was all mine.”

“So I see.” For the first time, Thanos’s gaze actually moved to Thor, taking him in with a half-hearted interest that might once have amused Loki. “Reunited, are we?” he asked, careless, and Loki’s face resolved itself to granite expression.

“Something to that effect.” He indicated the other prince with a cavalier swing of his left hand, only just resisting the urge to snatch up his brother’s right when he did so. “He wished to accompany me while I discharged my debt.”

“Naturally.” He nodded towards Thor’s belt. “You may discharge it now.”

Loki did not stir. “This is an exchange.”

“Of course it is.” The lipless grin flashed only briefly, and entirely without humour. “I gave you an army.”

“You gave me toy soldiers,” he corrected, and the fury of that failure flared bright for but a moment. Then he pushed it back; for the moment, the past held no primacy over the present. “But that was in exchange for the tesseract, which I now have in my possession. I speak of the other four.”

For the first time Thanos’s amusement peeked through his veneer of tedium. “State your deal, Asgardian.”

For one terrible moment, his voice failed him. Loki licked his lips, formed them careful and casual around the words. “The soul stone.”

Thor stiffened, but Loki looked not away from Thanos. “What of it?”

“It can lift the veil between the living and the dead. In the most skilful of hands, it might restore life to those already passed over.”

Broad shoulders, masked in thick armour, moved in fluid ennui. “This is true.”

“But that’s not what I speak of,” Loki added, and now sudden passion moved into his voice, elevating it beyond mere statement to the purity of frank oration. “The deepest power it holds is this: that it might open the way to a dimension entire and above these that we already know.” He paused, let the word hang unspoken before he gave it simple life: “Paradise.”

Such flagrant theatrics earned him only another unkind smile. Loki held his ground, and raised his hands, opening them as if requesting favour from the Norns themselves.

“Send my brother and I there, and neither of us will ever trouble these universes again.”

“Loki!”

Thor’s shock should have hit him like a hurricane. Loki remained instead locked in this battle of wills and words with the Titan, who paid the thunder god no more heed than he had previously. “A bold request – and promise, for that matter.”

Even as Thor’s aura rose about them both, ionising the air until it tasted of ozone and uru, Loki paid him no quarter. “Let us not disseminate,” he said, the trained diplomat uncaring of anything but the party before him, and the promise of treaty beneath every resonating tension. “I know what you wish to do to these galaxies and dimensions both. Your mistress is a ravenous one – and should you have all six stones, then you will feed her until she is satiated.”

Such observation impressed him not. “Indeed.”

Loki pressed on; he had spent but little time in the immediate company of the Titan, but he was a prince twice over and a worker of seiðr above all others. He would not back down before even such a creature. “Perhaps those of our kind would never stop you in your endeavours,” he observed, words gilded and given too easy. “But certainly, as the King of Asgard and his Jötunn-born seiðmaðr, we could create…considerable nuisance to you. As would the allies we have made, both in ourselves and as Asgardian royalty.”

“You wished to destroy Asgard, once upon a more fallen time.”

The observation had him laughing, the sound sharp and sweet. Not even Thor’s aghast face could have held it back. “I frankly care not for its active destruction – it will fall itself into ruin under the weight of its gross arrogance soon enough. I do not even need to see it happen.” He took a breath, released it on a harsh chuckle. “If I have my brother, the universe entire can burn in our absence and I would not care a whit.”

“Loki, no!”

“It seems your brother does not agree.” Thanos remarked, and Loki’s laughter resolved itself into a bladed smile.

“He will come around.” And he flicked his eyes sideways at last, catching Thor’s with a harsh demand. “He cannot hope to stop you alone, and in this place I am his only ally.” Returning his attention to the Titan, he added, offhand and easy, “All I want is a place where only he and I matter.”

“If you want it so badly, why is it that you did not find it yourself, given you have the stone yourself?”

Loki’s smile had turned very unpleasant. “I have not the strength to wield it so. You do.”

The manner in which the Titan leaned back in his throne reminded Loki uncomfortably of the days in which he himself had sat Hliðskjálf, a king lolling above the roiling tumble of worker ants beneath him. “Flattery is not the method by which to seek success with those such as myself.”

“Which is why I offer you unbridled power,” he reposted, swift, and the Titan might have looked amused if not for the tightening of one hand. It appeared empty; Loki could not be sure it truly was.

“Which I could take with but the stone I already possess. It would be but the work of moments to destroy you both where you now stand,” Thanos noted, and Loki blinked widened eyes.

“Then you make enemies of many a world before you have even brought death and destruction to their very doorsteps.”

“Asgard would stand against me with or without its golden son.”

“Without its golden son Asgard is a lion without teeth, ruled by a ragged old tom whose hunting days are long gone.” The viciousness of the denouncement came with bloodied ease, as if bit into its still-moving carcass with sharpened teeth. “Alliances are formed through friendships, and in this days suspicion has turned many a friend from its inner circle – except, of course, for Thor and his newfound penchant for seeking union with those off world.” And again, his smile had turned too ugly to be entirely a lie. “Without its shining hero, Asgard is so much dust waiting to blow away with the western winds.”

The sudden laughter could only be genuine. “You always did talk too much.”

Loki gave a fluid shrug despite the interior tremor of everything he was. “Some would call it a gift.”

“I suspect only those who did not have to listen to it.” This time the Titan leaned forward in his throne, taking in the two before him: the dark-haired sorcerer, so still and so stubborn in his diplomacy, and the golden-crowned thunderer who all but vibrated with the withheld charge of brewing storm. “So: the crazed orphan-child of Asgard wishes to take its thunder-son and live their days in isolation from everything but one another?”

“I thought you might understand,” he said, feigning the shimmer of confused wonder he let fill his face. “Is this not what you want with your own mistress?”

Much as he’d been lauded once for his silvered tongue, in this he’d spoken too far beyond the borders of sense and propriety. But instead of taking any offense at such presumption, the Titan shook his helmeted head, relaxed further back into his throne as one hand raised in beckoning idle welcome.

“Approach with the gauntlet, Asgardian. Then let us see where you might take yourself and your brother.”

Loki turned at once, ignoring how easily he fell to the commanding tone of Thanos’s voice, reaching for the leather bag hung from his brother’s belt. He could claim no surprise when one hand closed tight over his wrist.

“ _Loki_.”

“Thor.” He did not look back to the observing Titan, or to the paths he might have chosen otherwise. That way lay madness. That way lay the loss of everything. “Do not think. That is my responsibility.”

The burning intensity of those blue eyes, inherited so carelessly and so perfectly from their mother, held him with a strength far greater than that of hand about vambrace. “Loki, you can’t do this.”

“I do it for _you_.” The savagery of the statement hurt his brother, and he knew it. Loki twisted the knife deeper. “I can make you happy, Thor. I swear that I can.”

From behind Loki could feel watchful gaze of the Titan where it rested harsh upon him back, amused and mocking. It was just as they had been the first time he’d been dragged before Thanos on his knees, a ragged and ruined thing. But then it was not, because he had Thor before him now and in that he had will and strength enough to do anything.

“I _can_ ,” he said, again, and Thor’s expression folded in upon itself like a collapsing house of cards, terrible in its sadness and its sincerity and its deep dark sorrow.

“Yes,” he said, very soft. “You can.” And he left his hand fall away, their gazes never breaking apart. “But not like this.”

“Thor.” Now Loki reached for him, pale hands scrabbling for purchase on the smooth metal of his vambraces. They’d once borne his own horned sigil. Loki wondered if his nails alone could scratch it there afresh as he smiled, tremulous, and tried again. “This is what you want. I know it is. And you know it too. _Trust_ me.”

Thor only smiled. Above it his eyes were so damnably bright – like the stone in the sceptre he’d lost to Midgard what seemed a lifetime ago. He’d controlled so many what felt so easily then. But it had been all an illusion. His heart felt fit to shatter as he wondered why he’d ever expected Thor to trust him with the fate of all the worlds.

“Thor,” he said, and his voice undulated like the wailing of widows and orphaned children. “Thor, why didn’t you just listen?”

Thor only shook his head. Loki’s fingers dug deeper into his forearm even through the vambrace. Somehow he could almost hear the fine bones of wrist grinding against one another, and yet Thor did not yield.

_Satisfaction is not in my nature._

_Surrender’s not in mine._

“Thanos.” Dry-eyed, hoarse-voiced, Loki spoke to the Titan though he did not look away from Thor. “Do this for me now, and I will be in your debt – and my brother too.” And he turned, smile trembling and troublesome. “The lord of storm and the lord of chaos. Would you not have them both in your retinue?”

“You ask for willing exile?” he asked, still deeply unimpressed by the tragedy unfolding before him. Loki’s grip tightened again on his motionless brother, even when he knew how very futile the gesture was.

“You could call us back.” His last gambit fell flat even to his own ears. Thanos would never use the gauntlet in his service now, not with his rebellious brother ever at his side. Still he tried, one final time. “As long as we were returned when unneeded, we might serve you as you require.”

“Your brother does not seem convinced.”

“Give me time.” And Loki looked again to Thor, too pleading, too desperate. “He is mine. And he will know it.”

“And if he does not?”

This time when he laughed, wild and cruel as the sound was, it was still entirely true. “We could fight across the universe for thousands of years, and never grow tired of one another.” Now his hand dropped down, clenched tight over the deceptively small satchel on his brother’s belt. “Spare us both, and I will give you the gauntlet.”

“I could merely take it.” He paused, added with careless consideration, “And you would be dead.”

“So soon?” And bitterly he laughed. “What a waste.”

But it was Thor who took his face in one hand, raised it again. “Loki,” he said, hand held tight over Loki’s, “I will never take this choice.”

“So I gather.” Thanos did not even blink when both brothers turned to him. “Asgardian, your deal is falling all to pieces. What will you do about it?”

Loki ignored him. “Thor.” With brutal fury, he caught him about the neck in parody of the affectionate gesture his brother so favoured, and dug his nails deep enough to draw blood. “You lied to me.”

Confusion shattered his battlefield reserve. “What?”

“You said you loved me. That you wanted me. That I was the most important person in all the worlds to you.”

At first Thor appeared to have no comprehension whatsoever of the poison pouring from his brother’s lips. Then his expression darkened, appalled as it was suddenly furious. “Loki, that doesn’t make you the _only_ person in existence!”

“It should.” And his fury burst from him like lahar from a caldera, burning and relentless and utterly destructive. “Do you want to die here? Because you will! Unless you come with me you will be dead and gone and I will be alone and would you leave me again when you promised me you never would?”

“I grow impatient, Asgardian.” Thanos intoned both displeasure and order from the distance of his damned throne. “Give me the gauntlet. Now.”

Even had he still intended it now, Loki had no choice and no chance. Thor drew the cursed thing free so quick Loki scarcely saw him move either forward, or back. In his hands the gauntlet remained not the overly stylised iron thing it had been in Odin’s vault. Instead it became something shining and lovely, golden as the hair that began to rise as if become the electricity arcing in the air – and Loki could taste it. Already he could see the silvering of Thor’s eyes, how he seemed to _expand_ , as if made purely of light instead of life-bound flesh and blood.

“Thor!” He staggered a half-step forward, found himself unable to go any closer. “Thor, _put it down_!”

“No.”

“Thor, please.” He sounded like a child and he couldn’t help it, didn’t even care. “ _Please_.”

In his fright, he looked back to Thanos without guarding his expression. The Titan merely leaned upon one arm of the damnable throne. His amusement gilded him like armour. There was no sign of the aether, but Loki did not doubt it was far from his great hands.

“Mere children, squabbling over lust as if it were love,” he said, and the dullness of it seemed to leave him wearied of the entire conversation. “Asgardian, there is no deal between us. Any alliance of ours is ended. You may expect to perish for your presumption in coming here before me in such lie and deception.”

Such decree should have sent even his tactician’s mind into overdriven panic, but he found it didn’t matter – because his heart tripped over every other organ in his torso, a hummingbird with frantic wings beating so fast, as if to fly from his chest to leave him hollow and bloodless. Thor still held the gauntlet, right hand paused before its donning. And his brother watched him, far too calm for a berserker about to break his restraints.

“Jane told me how to calibrate it for my own elemental powers, Loki,” he said, in the voice of an elder brother assuring the younger that the tree was secure enough to climb, the cave safe enough to explore, the monster always able to be slain. “You must trust me.”

“You idiot.” He only knew of the tears when he tasted them at the corners of his twisted mouth, shouting his fears and his fury alike. He’d always intended to lie to Thor to catch Thanos out. He had not expected to be lied to in turn. “No. You cannot do this. You simply _cannot_. You don’t have the strength!”

“I am Thor.” His fingers twitched, naked yet of the cursed gauntlet and its glittering array of death and destruction in condensed form. “I am son of Odin, Prince of Asgard, Stormlord of the Nine Realms.” His hand slid home, the reversal of a sword drawn from its cradling sheath. “And I will not stand by and watch a genocidal tyrant burn the universe to dust.”

Loki might have screamed, if not for Thanos’s wry observation. “Ah, I begin to see why you covet this one so, Loki,” he said, and his fingers moved in quick military tattoo upon the arm of his throne. “Were he not such a fool, I might wish to keep him myself.”

And Thor himself, he blazed to life like a longboat catching its last arrow. Before Loki’s horrified gaze, the silver and blue and crimson armour began to glitter as if crystalline, his very aura bursting into star-burst life. “I will never belong to anyone but myself,” Thor said, voice strange and shifting with the sudden onslaught of power, “or the one who makes up my other half.”

“Stop.” Desperation sang from him with every word, his own seiðr flickering in impotent demand that he be obeyed by this most intractable of creatures. “I don’t know what that fool woman of yours told you, but she knows nothing. You cannot do this. You _cannot_.” His voice cracked, a rift valley tearing the very fabric of his soul in twain, filling it with misery and loss. “Thor. Don’t. Don’t leave me.”

The smile lit his entire face from within, his heart the stubborn star-fire of a sun too close to supernova. Loki’s stomach clenched, bile burning in his throat, hate and love warring until he wanted to curl up and die from it. Thor had always _always_ shone too damned bright, brilliant in gold and silver storm. “I’m making it so that I never will,” his brother said, simple and true, and Loki’s hands clawed at nothing but air. Trust the mortal woman to have taken his plan only to tear it wide open.

Trust Thor to be the one never to listen.

“Stop it! Stop it!”

Thor did not. Raising the damned hammer gifted to him by his own fool heart, he let the wind rise about him like a song. “I do not do this alone,” he said, and the fool sounded so _happy_ , as if Valhalla’s wide open doors could never serve to remind him what home he would leave behind. “They say the infinity stones are singularities made solid. What is Mjölnir but the heart of a dying star, the truest of weapons? She teaches me how to always burn, and never to be consumed.”

Thanos, eyes dark as his armour and unimpressed by any display of emotion put before him, shook his broad head as he rose in his throne. “You are but food to the elder gods, Asgardian.” With every step down and forward he sounded an easy death knell, its beat neither slowing nor weakening the closer he came to the bright burning flame Thor had allowed himself to become. It was with half-hearted scorn that he noted, “You should have listened to your child of a brother.”

It consumed Loki like fire, this desperate need to touch him: to reach forward, to knock the hammer from his hand and wrench the gauntlet free. But Thor burned so bright now Loki could scarcely _look_ at him. The idea of even touching him made him sick with fear. From earliest childhood, when Frigga had discovered and first nurtured that first spark of seiðr within him, Loki had fallen prey to a deep fascination with power, no matter its cost. But this, _this_ – this held the stink of death over everything. Thor was being unmade before his eyes, and the great idiot could do nothing but smile as it happened.

“You fool.” Now Loki smiled too, the expression tearing his face in two, eyes wild and wondering and undone. “And you say I’m the one who doesn’t know how to listen.”

Thor looked to him then. Loki had wished for it, and now he wished with all his heart that Thor had not done so. Heartbreaking in its simplicity, his gentle smile was a promise to return – one that would never, _could_ never be kept. And then he turned back to the Titan and his beautiful face had turned to the granite features of a god bringing death and the end of all things.

_But you are not destruction, brother mine, for all you wield the storm. You are **life** , and this is not your power to wield._

“They say you wish to bring Death to all the worlds.” Conversational now, Thor stepped forward; the ground trembled beneath his footstep as if teetering upon the edge of its own rupture. “Death comes to us all. But not all at once. Not without life replacing it in turn.” With narrowed eyes, almost apologetic though entirely without regret, Thor tightened his gauntleted hand about Mjölnir’s haft. “And so, first I shall bring death to you, Titan Thanos.”

He did not even bother with laughter, hardly stirred enough to even acknowledge the force of nature about to break its storm before him. “It’s eating you alive even before you try to harness its power,” he observed. “You cannot harm me.”

“I can.” The throne stood empty behind and between them both. “I will.”

And that was what drove Loki to his feet, scrambling through the dust to stand before him, chest heaving and eyes burning and his skin crawling as if it intended to shed itself and leave him here, raw and exposed. “ _Thor_ ,” he gasped, and reached for him, knowing that his hand would never be caught in return.

And Thor turned away from his enemy, the oldest lesson forgotten. “Loki.” His face held no expression, was nothing but pure brilliant golden-white light. But his left hand, free of gauntlet and hammer, stretched out. “As if I would ever leave you.”

Loki reached blindly out, thrust himself forward – and then Thor’s form expanded, _exploded_ , a storm of light and laughter and love.

Then it was gone. _Thor_ was gone. And in his wake Loki felt himself again in the Void: it was nothing. There was nothing left at all but to fall.

But this time the ground caught him fast, and hard. He had never wished so badly that it had not.


	18. 3.6: Chrysopoeia

Falling through the Void had in fact been the easiest thing in all the worlds. The landing was where everything first went wrong. In a way, that was how it had been with Thor. Their separation, at the moment of the Allfather’s banishment of his elder son, had been a kind of freefall: so startling and so sudden it never really quite hurt the way one thought it should. The pain only came when Thor had landed upon his feet, had found new friends and confidants, and had left Loki standing at the top all alone. Their lives had been rewritten, changed about, broken apart and put back together. Only Loki had found it more the end of everything than any sort of new beginning.

“Thor…?”

The name echoed hollow around the false atmosphere of the asteroid. Only the hammer remained, quiescent where she had fallen into the star-tainted dust of the asteroid Thanos had repurposed as his own. A crater had formed around the weapon, so much smaller than the one in New Mexico. It made a cruel kind of sense. Instead of having been cast away by an angry king, this time it was as if she’d been dropped by an errant child – one distracted from his task by a passing butterfly, the sound of the river in the distance, the scent of dessert upon a windowsill.

Mjölnir remained Thor’s hammer. But there was no Thor left to claim her. That was the worst of it: Loki could no longer even feel him. Even in the darkest of moments in the furthest reaches of the galaxy, he had known his brother’s presence. If he’d wished it – even if he _hadn’t_ – he’d still been able to scent him in the burnt ozone of lightning strike, sense him in the rumble of the ground beneath his feet, taste him in the whip of wind against his face on some hellish backwater planet. But here, where Thor had first expanded and then collapsed in upon himself: nothing. Nothing remained of the Odinson at all.

Thor was dead. He had never thought Thor could be dead and Loki alive. Oh, there would always be those half-scattered memories of days since passed: Thor, fallen under a backhand blow from the Destroyer. Thor, falling through the sky. Thor, bent over the dagger thrust between the plates of his armour. Thor, clutching a handless wrist to his chest and screaming for the loss of everything he held dear.

_But none of those were any true death. You always took it back. You never played for keeps_.

But the infinity stones did.

“Bring me the gauntlet, Loki.”

A fool might have attributed a kindly tone to those words. Loki was not that variety of fool. He remained silent upon his knees, unmoving. Everything of his mind had instead turned itself back to the memory of a place of nothing. His brother had come for him there. But whether it had been by his will or Hela’s, it did not matter now. Hela had taken her payment and removed the bond she’d forged just so she might know the love of a thunder-king. And Loki was not Thor. He could not reach across worlds and claw back his brother just because he was the hero and the hero always won even in the bitterest of endings.

“I am not one to be entertained by theatrics and tragedy, but you and your brother did make quite the double act between you.” Thanos stepped uncaringly close, but then he had never had occasion to fear one lost Asgardian prince. “You must understand, I will take it whether it comes from your hand or not. But if you co-operate then I might give you some consolation.”

“There is no consolation.” Loki did not look up. He could not. He was but ice, cold and unfeeling and immutable. Even now, staring as he did at the feet of the Titan, he could not bring himself to rise again. Above him, Thanos made a sound that might have been a snort in the vocabulary of a lesser species.

“Well, perhaps your paradise will be somewhat lacking without your lover-brother there with you,” he granted, and despite the ease of his words there was not an ounce of patience in him at all. “But you must understand that given his most recent behaviour, I would not be inclined to call him back from beyond the veil of death.”

Loki did not flick his own eyes towards the fallen hammer. Rather, it seemed they were pulled there, magnetised by her own desire. Thanos had moved towards her even though he was not a suitor Loki could imagine she might tolerate. But he did not lay his hands upon her, neither shaft nor head. Perhaps even his ego would not permit him to attempt to lift she who would be wielded by none but her self-chosen master.

But his eyes did move over the runes writ there, tracing each curve and corner with an easy contempt. “So terribly Asgardian,” he murmured, and though Loki could not be sure of his actual meaning, the Titan glanced with incurious eyes towards him. “I would ask why you could not predict such a pointlessly dramatic ending, but then you are yourself not Asgardian.”

That casual insult burrowed deep into his skin, more a burn than a blow. The first day he had had Thor again, they had spent the night together in that damned cave on Jötunheimr. While wearing his hated Jötunn skin Loki had held his brother’s golden head in his lap, both given over to a sharing of their grief. It might have eased it but little, but it had been enough. There would be nothing now to ease a grief such as this.

Dismissing Mjölnir, Thanos turned his back on her in the same manner he might some child’s broken toy. “Perhaps I shall send you to Tivan. I might then know where you are, should you ever recover from your shock and find your mind once more.” One finger tapped against his lipless mouth, and it almost curved to amusement. “He did so express an interest in you: the Jötunn runt raised Asgardian, more female than male in his sorcery.”

Stirred by the words, his mind suddenly echoing with the forgotten cacophony of violence and alcohol and argument and desperation, Loki looked up. “I did notice,” he said, dry as gravedust. “There was a reason why he bought me so many drinks.”

“But I did not need you tranquilised.” The Titan’s shadow fell long over Loki as he drew close one final time. “Tivan has little vision. But I see all, Asgardian runt child – and from the beginning, I always saw all of you.”

Loki kept his silence. The hammer, in the near distance, hummed to herself, as if mocking him and his surrender. But then she always treated him with such callous disdain, after taking his brother away. While Thor had always had his little friends as they were growing up, friends who found Loki disturbing or laughable, they hadn’t meant anything. At the end of the day the two little princes would return to their palace and then behind those high closed doors it would be only Loki and Thor together. Loki had only needed to share him with their mother and father, and in those days that had hardly seemed any chore at all. It wasn’t until Mjölnir that Thor had first been claimed by something which would not share him with Loki.

But now there remained only Loki. Nothing remained Thor but the damnable hammer. And when Thanos turned his attention to her one more time, something in Loki recoiled at the thought of his hand upon her might, muted as it might be. But then the quicker part of his mind whispered that the Titan might be distracted just a little, now. Just enough. Loki could rise. He could retreat. He could escape.

Strangely, it was Sif’s voice that broke into his thoughts, dour and dire conscience. _I wanted to be sure you would not run when you needed most to stand your ground_.

Thanos stepped closer. Once gauntleted hand reached out, grasping and greedy, the hand of a child never denied a thing it desired. On his feet, Loki crossed that empty space with lightning flash. The dagger point pressed to the Titan’s gorget, sharp and deadly despite its tender size by comparison.

And Loki’s voice was as steel. “Do not touch her.”

“Her master is gone.” Though one eyebrow cocked beneath the rim of his helmet, Thanos made no defensive gesture. In fact Loki could sense no tension whatsoever in the great body held before his blade. “You can feel that he has left this place. Surely you more so than I.”

Fury roiled through him, though Loki did not give it free reign. Not yet. This place held memories of little more than humiliation and hate. The crumpled body in the corner spoke of one revenge taken, of one tormentor gone. In his heart Loki knew the second would never fall. But Loki himself would not go down easy.

His blade did not waver at the Titan’s throat. “Do _not_ touch her.”

“ _She_ is but a fallen relic. As is her once-master.” Now his eyes moved to the discarded gauntlet, quiescent beside the haft of Mjölnir. “Given I have the infinity stones in my possession, what use have I for a child’s toy?” His expression, fixed upon Loki, held nothing but disgust. “I do not want what miniscule power it possesses. It is rather I would clear all the refuse from my sanctuary before I make offerings to my mistress.”

The glint of starlight upon his blade almost blinded Loki himself. The hiss of his miserable fury burned his own tongue. “Say that again.”

“I do not repeat myself, Asgardian.”

The great right hand shot upward, grasped about Loki’s vambrace, and twisted it around until the blade faced his direction instead. It didn’t actually matter; the motion broke Loki’s wrist clean in two even as Thanos thrust him away like so much trash. Hitting one of the stone menhir hard, Loki gave a croaking shout; it was barely audible over the cracking of something else. _Probably ribs_ , he thought dimly, but the force of it had knocked all the breath from his body anyway.

Thanos appeared not at all interested in what had become of Loki. Instead he cocked his head as he looked again to Mjölnir. His casual half-interest could not have been feigned, nor the easy confidence in leaving the infinity gauntly discarded to one side.

“It is a curious artefact,” he stated, bland as sheet ice. “Forged in the heart of a dying star, they say.”

“They _say_ ,” Loki rasped, and laughed. Blood bubbled up out of his lips, spilled over his chin. They were broken ribs, after all. “They say _nothing_. It is _true_.”

“Then I might keep it myself, rather than sending it to Tivan.” Taking a step backward, he waved a dismissive hand. “It might be useful enough, in its own way.”

“It is not useful.” His mouth tasted of sharp metallic fury. “It is _Mjölnir_.”

“If it means so much to you, then take it.” That terrible toothless grin followed the inviting sweep of his hand. “It is but a curiosity to me.” The too-bright eyes narrowed. “Though I cannot imagine you are long for these worlds, so I shall have it when it falls from your hand too.”

The cruelty of it might have been breathtaking, from anyone else – for surely Thanos knew of the geas cast upon Mjölnir. That no-one had been known to heft her in recent memory save Odin and Thor. Despite the useless nature of one wrist, Loki’s other hand twitched. He had half a dozen more blades still yet to loose.

He very nearly let fly when one great hand moved to caress her uru head. “A stormlord,” he mused, eyes moving over the runes of the geas, as if he had any hope of comprehending their seiðr. “The very heart of chaos. No wonder your soul was called to his.”

Loki went very still, hand empty of blade, mind filled with just one thought.

_Our souls are never to be parted._

“Hela,” he whispered.

Thanos’s head snapped up, eyes a bright blazing blue that could not but remind him of the tesseract, of being swallowed by its light and spat out halfway across the universe. “Do you wish to rush upon a blade, Asgardian, and die an honourable death? For you yearn most to die in battle, do you not?” It might have been nearly conversational, if not for the sudden twist of anger; he had recognised her name. “But then, you are something else entirely. What is it that your true blooded kind want most? To die at the hands of the strongest, or at their own when they recognise their weakness?”

Again that desire flooded him: to rush forward, blades preceding him so he might land the fatal blow himself. But as a spinner of stories and of lies Loki knew the follies of fanciful imagining. He rose instead, and turned to her.

There was no real understanding in any of his movements. It was instead the magnetism of _her_ : drawing him close like iron filament to a lodestone. Extending his uninjured arm, he closed his fingers, and knew it true, the near-weight of Mjölnir in his hand. A low burst of electricity burst through him. His lips quirked in an involuntary spasm, something close to a smile. Thor was dead but Mjölnir was alive. She remained the calm centre and eye of the storm. In her, he might again be a half-being made whole.

_If only for a moment more._

“So, it is to be death by combat.” And Thanos very nearly laughed. “Do not concern yourself with pain. It will not be long.” Stepping closer, he added with a nonchalant appreciation, “And I do think my lady will welcome you. She seems to have a taste for lovers of the star-crossed variety.”

Loki shifted his grip upon her shaft, ignoring the flaring agony in chest and opposing wrist. “He was a fool.”

“Heroes often are.” He next words were spoken almost as if he expected Loki to live long enough to heed their advice. “You should not have aligned yourself with one. It is against the order of things.”

“ _I_ am against the order of things.”

“And such pleasure it has brought you!” But the mockery of it had faded; Thanos had never seen one lost and false Asgardian prince as being worth much more than mild novelty. “Come, be a gift for my lady. She does so love the pretty ones.”

The hammer would always belong to his brother. But he needed only the scarcest of moments to recall how Thor had appeared in his last moments. How Loki had wanted nothing more than to through himself upon the pyre of his brother’s blazing glory, even as his brother smiled as if their near-immortal lives had finally become precisely that.

_This is impossible._

Such doubt, voiced low in his mind, meant nothing now. Loki smiled and felt the motion of it breaking his heart wide open as he called upon his brother’s truest mistress.

“Help me.” Loki curled his hand tighter around her haft. “Please.”

The leather felt warm and damp beneath his skin, as if from soft spring rains. A low hum of awakening life had a smile creeping across his face, strange and small. He knew what it was: Mjölnir, shifting in her sleep, dreaming aloud, uru-stardeath head glinting with light like the fluttering eyelashes of a drowsing maiden.

“I will not beg,” he whispered. “I will only ask. And only once.”

Thanos waited, his unconcern perhaps to be the undoing of everything. “Are you ready to die, Asgardian?”

“No.” And he smiled wider still. “No, I’m ready to live.”

Loki grasped the hammer. And then lifted her to the sky.

For a moment it was as if even time itself had decided to hold its breath in awe of such impossible folly. Loki himself might have been taken aback by this turn of the universe, had he not been the one to ask for it. He held her harder. The sudden impossible weight filled him with sudden terror – as if it might crush him to the ground, ending everything he was, had ever been, might have once become.

She did not. And he laughed, sudden and carefree. Of the two of them, as children, Thor had so often been the one to wake first. It would be deeply unusual for Loki to have to wake him – or have opportunity to do so. This was like one of those rare times: sliding into his elder brother’s room on shadowfeet, slipping into his bed, placing his hands over his eyes and whispering into his ear: “You’re it.”

Now that blinking wide-eyed awakening rocked through Loki like cloudburst – his brother had always gone from sleep to wakefulness in one bombastic second. A warrior’s habit, some called it; Frigga had suspected it was rather a child who never wanted to miss a thing. Loki hadn’t cared either way. For him, it had been all about Thor himself: finding him. Touching him. Calling him. Summoning him to his side. Calling him home.

“You are everything,” he whispered, and the storm shattered into sound and brilliant light above his head. It curled down his arm, setting his body aflame from blood to nerve to flesh. The cleansing of such fire burned away all pain, all lingering doubt. Opening his mouth, he felt fit to loose a sound like orgasm. But even then it was nothing so earthy. Instead it was as if his very being had been taken all to pieces and then set to resonation, a harmonic seeking its leading melody.

And there it was: a low laugh careening through him, underlain with the high simplicity of a child. _Brother!_

Loki knew that tears coursed down his cheeks. But then the rain soaked him too. He could blame that upon Thor. As if in answer thunder rolled like laughter, turning the ground beneath his feet upside down.

“ _Thor_.”

Loki had been inside him, and then had in turn taken Thor into his own body. In comparison with that physicality this was something different entire. Thor had become something different, something new – a sleeping satellite taken into safe-keeping inside his own weapon. And Thor invited Loki to use him as the same. The presence of him wrapped around Loki like a second skin, safe and welcome: but all weapons had their blade, whether traditional or no. Though one might have made it with the intent to protect, all weapons could kill.

_This is what you wanted_ , and how amused the voice sounded. _Me, all to yourself. Isn’t it?_

Another laugh followed, rolling around inside of him. Loki wanted to curl in upon himself, keep it all and share it with no one. But even then he could taste the infinity stones upon his brother’s spirit. They lay aside now, neither Titan nor trickster having picked them up. Loki did not believe it would matter should Thanos choose to. Thor’s soul was inside Loki’s body and it _blazed_ with the potential of six separate powers, holding it just long enough to share with the one who might use it best.

_It is what I was born for_ , the voice murmured in his mind, bright and brilliant and almost too beautiful. Loki’s hand trembled upon Mjölnir’s oiled leather, though his voice echoed like thunder.

“And me? What was I born for?”

_To guide me. To show me. To be my eyes and my ears and my mind when I have little enough of my own._

The heart of a berserker should not be so gentle. But then there was nothing gentle in this soul when Loki lowered Mjölnir, conducting the sky with her feral war-song, and looked to the Titan.

“Death.”

He smiled. “Death is my mistress.” Yet even now he did not reach for the gauntlet, eyes upon Loki alone.

_But I am not alone._

“You cannot kill me, Asgardian.”

“Can’t I?”

Loki darted forward. The swift movement earned him a striking blow, glancing from a raised vambrace. Yet for all the ease of it, there was something _different_ in this form. Thor always had had impossible grace for one so large, but then the strength of him in Loki’s body was something else entirely. Speed and power merged in perfect union until Mjölnir sang like victory in his hand, each strike falling to the rhythm of a war drum. They moved in the manner of longboats crossing the waters, fire in their torches and in their bellies; runes painted on skin, teeth bared, callused hands wrapped about leathered haft.

“You strange little creature,” said Thanos. It sounded as though he marvelled at his idiocy, the unexpected delight of a servant gone terribly, amusingly feral. “You consumed your brother like a condemned man about his last meal. I always knew your greed would end you, but this is something of a surprise.”

Loki’s smirk was thin-lipped, flat, kept its teeth to itself. “I always did like chaos best.”

“It does keep the worlds interesting,” he agreed amiably, and struck with a speed and grace that again one might never had predicted of a creature so brawn and broad. Loki, despite having never seen the Titan in battle, felt no surprise. In this moment he wondered if he might ever feel surprise again.

_We have thousands more years, Loki. There is a lifetime of surprise yet to be lived._

The Titan chose no weapon of his own, except in the sense that his entire body and mind were one fine-forged armoury. Mjölnir sang light and pleased in Loki’s hand, every strike and parry sending a ripple of laughter through his roused blood.

But it was not Mjölnir alone. Though her spirit was the truest centre of the hammer, alongside her Loki felt _him_. They’d never had a similar style of battle – but Loki had studied beside his brother practically from the cradle. One moment, he moved in the easy circular fluidity of a seiðmaðr with his knives and his magics; the next, the hammer swung with the brute force of an elemental berserker. There seemed no border between the two, no real difference; they flowed into one another like two rivers meeting an endless sea, one whipped to frenzy and fury by the shrieking wind of fresh storm.

Thanos could be named nothing but a formidable warrior. The universe entire would have trembled beneath his conquest with good reason. But the infinity stones limned every one of Loki’s actions with a power beyond imagination. Without both Thor and Mjölnir to hand, Loki knew without doubt that such power would have consumed him whole and alive and screaming.

But it did not.

Deflecting another blow, Thanos took two quick steps backward, two fists raised while his eyes crackled with fierce amusement. Beneath that continued contempt for the entire debacle, Loki could sense the Titan’s impatience. He had sat a throne too long; he had lost his lust for duelling.

His fists clashed together, the force not unlike that of avalanche. “You will be a fine gift for my lady,” he observed, eyes fixed upon Loki’s face rather than the hammer he wielded, or the play of infinity-light beneath his gleaming skin. And Loki smiled, remembering how his brother had done the same, just before the end.

_Finish it, Loki_.

“I am nobody’s gift.”

The striking power of the gauntlet amplified the downward thrust of Mjölnir with a power so intense Loki did not even know it entire. He could not be sure it was even possible for him to do so. Instead he rose up from the ground with hammer in hand, the gesture so utterly _Thor_ he could not help but laugh his fury to the skies. And those same skies lifted him high, propelled him downwards to the sudden widened eyes in the slack face of the Titan below. When they met again Mjölnir connected with the force of impossible storm. The same thing that had destroyed Thor would now destroy the mad Titan Thanos.

_It didn’t destroy me_ , he whispered. _Never destroyed. Made me into what I needed to be. For you. For all of us._

The words struck him with the force of lightning strike, burning through mind and nerve with the scarring terror of its charged heat. Loki wanted to scream. He also wanted to cry. But did not do what he wanted – he did what was needed. Folding his fingers tighter yet about her leathered haft, Loki again hefted Mjölnir high. He’d always known what she was: a conductor of storms, an avatar of lightning, a conduit of elemental power beyond his imagining. She had been forged in the heart of a dying star, born of the impossible crucible of singularity. She could withstand the terrible truth of the infinity stones. Under her protection, so could her master.

And so could his beloved.

Bright storm rocked the very ground beneath their feet. Thanos stumbled with the tremor, went to his knees. Such a blow as he had taken should have shattered any other creature. But Thanos had been something more than merely alive, Loki noted with detached curiosity. But there was not anyone in existence who could deny the combined power of Thor, of Mjölnir, of the infinity stones six.

_And of Loki, too. Do not forget Loki. The worlds will sing forever of this day. I shall make sure of it_.

He breathed the last of his words with utter bewilderment, staring upward into an impossible storm-riddled sky. “This is impossible.”

Loki gave a little shrug. “That’s what makes it possible.” And he smiled. “Goodbye, Thanos. I do hope your lady death welcomes you with arms wide open.”

Mjölnir rose once more to the heavens. The power of her thrummed through his veins, vicious and beautiful. The infinity stones, awoken and in concert, laughed madness along with it.

_Oh, what I could do with such power!_

It was if arms wrapped around his soul from within, gentle and strong even with the low-voiced chuckle that preceded the words.

_You could come home_.

His answer came without thought, without second-guess, without reserve.

_Yes. Yes, I could._

The unseen arms tightened. Then, everything went white.

 

*****

 

In the end he came back. Piece by piece, moment by moment, aching cell by aching cell. Loki had never thought the process of rebirth could hurt so much.

_The act of creation never came easy – especially not for those whose remit runs more towards destruction._

The voice who murmured those words into his ear held no familiarity – but he could taste damp earth in his mouth, the rich scent of oozing bark and freshly unfurled leaves sharp in his nose. With a groan he rolled over, found himself with eyes opened wide and lying upon his back. Staring at the sky, he found it both unfamiliar and familiar. The disorder of his thoughts brought frank misery more than memory – but then he had felt the end of something. In that, deep pleasure turned to sudden searing desire.

_Thor!_

Loki shoved himself up hard, caring not a whit that his body screamed as one single aching pain. Everything of him now felt clumsy and childish, nothing moving quite when or how it should. But he just managed to push upward, hands scrabbling to all sides, seeking something that had to be there, that _must_ be there, that could not be gone.

It was not. But it _was_ a body, motionless, laid curled upon its side. The armour glinted, battered and bloodied; the crimson cloak lay tattered and torn, his face hidden by the matted mess of blond hair.

“No.” Anger and misery and fear coalesced, then clotted in his blood as if it might stop his heart dead in his chest. “ _No_. You idiot. You oaf. You Norns-cursed _fool_ , get up. Get up!”

Without even being aware that he had crossed what meagre distance separated them, Loki dug fingers and nails into his brother’s biceps and shoved him over. Straddling him, with knees pressed up hard beneath his ribcage, he took him by the collar and shook him hard. It was the closest alternative he could stomach to the much stronger desire to pummel that stupid face until the eyes opened.

And they did. Bewildered and bleary and the blue of an almost-forgotten summer sky. Loki lurched back, almost lost his perch. But Thor’s hands caught upon his forearms, held him tight and close even though it seemed he himself found Loki to be his anchor.

“Loki.” It came out with a child’s wonder, disbelief melting into joy. His own voice was a rough rabble of misery and anger.

“You idiot,” he hissed, but Thor did not even appear to hear it. Instead his hands closed tighter still, eyes brightening as if the sun itself rose behind them.

“Loki,” and he laughed. “Loki, we did it.” His smile should have made everything better. “Loki, he’s _dead_.”

But Loki remained unmoving, words flat accusation. “So were you.”

His brother’s miserable fury finally appeared to break through his own pleasure at waking to find himself both alive and victorious. But try as he might to rise, Loki’s weight held him down. Still he didn’t seem to realise that his strength would permit him to shove him clean aside if he but tried hard enough. The blue eyes, very wide and more blue than silver searched his instead. The storm had gone. But then Loki could feel it still, under his own skin as well as his brother’s.

Thor let his arms go, and then pressed his palms down on the foreign soil, more dust than dirt. Loki hissed, like a roused serpent, and Thor became more bewildered yet. When he reached up Loki slapped his hand away so hard the sound rocketed around the stones like thundershot.

“Do not _touch_ me.” He might have wept for the idiocy of all of it, if he had not righteous rage fuelling him now. “You fool. You died and left me all alone.”

“I…” He shifted beneath him, gave up before resorting to force. “Loki. Let me up.”

“Why should I?” He rose all the same, stormed away – but not far. He had plenty more to say yet, and it spilled from his tongue like acid rain. “You went down yourself happily enough! You took that damn gauntlet and you let it burn you out and you didn’t give a damn what happened to me, left alone with that zealot maniac death-worshipping sadist.”

Very wary now, Thor kept his distance, and wisely did not say a word. Loki in return whirled on one heel to present his back to him, hands wrapped about himself. But he did not stop. Instead he remained in constant motion; he shivered so hard he felt that he might shatter all to pieces if he didn’t catch a hold of every little piece that threatened to fly away.

The sound of movement behind him only tripped his heartbeat into further arrhythmia. Loki could imagine so easily the look on his brother’s broad, beautiful face: confusion, uncertainty, the slightest beginnings of something very much like fear. Because they had _won_. The dragon lay slain, the treasure at its feet, and the prince had taken his prize.

But this prize would not be taken quietly.

When the inevitable footsteps came, they chanced everything upon a gentle approach. Apparently Thor had learned something, if not that which was most important.

_You left me all alone._

Loki’s voice resonated with the cold echo of an endless ice crevasse. “Why did you do it?”

Thor had come very close, but did not touch him. “Jane told me what you had planned.”

“So why didn’t you trust me?” He shouted the words, hands clenched to claws when he turned upon his brother like a wild beast. “Why didn’t you let me _do_ what I had planned?”

Thor shook his head, face scrunched up as if he struggled deeply to locate words fit enough for the purpose of explaining himself. “It was not a matter of _trust_ ,” he began, but Loki could not allow him to finish.

“So you say,” he snapped, bitter and broken. “I’m a liar and a thief and a coward, of course you would never trust that I would have reasons for all that I did – of course you would never trust _me_! Why did I even pretend that you would?”

“Stop.” When he reached out, his brother ducked away easily from his impotent grip. “Loki, stop this.”

“Why should I? It’s the truth. You did what you wanted because you couldn’t trust me not to screw this all up. You couldn’t let me save myself, you had to be the one to fight the battle and to win it and to kill him and—”

This time hands gripped him tight about his face, holding his jaw still so the rest of his words became garbled and choked.

“It was _us_.” Thor’s face had come to rest right before his, and in the motion echoed terrible memory: Loki and Thor both standing upon the crumbling edge of a Midgardian building. It had been a fierce battle come to stalemate, and despite the viciousness of it in that moment his brother’s expression had been nothing but gentle forgiveness and naïve hope. The fool had even offered him then a way out. Had perhaps even believed it could be given so freely, when it could only be taken at a cost his brother never could have calculated, let alone paid.

“Loki,” Thor said, and how he wanted to scream at his brother to shut his fool mouth. “Loki, it was _us_. We did it. Together. You and me. I only did what I did so we could.” Loki still said nothing, and Thor’s fingers dug deeper into his skin, bruising more out of desperation than anger. “I knew it would be this way. I knew—”

“You knew _nothing_!” Breaking free, not caring what else he might break in the process, Loki felt his entire being come to terrible blazing life with his own roiling seiðr. “This is how it always has been with you. Assuming that your stupid hammer and your stupid body and your stupid princehood and your stupid _faith_ will be enough even when the odds are impossible. Even when your failure means misery and death to those you love most.”

“Loki. Loki, _listen_.”

It came out of him as a scream – both of sound, and furious seiðr. “No!”

And in answer Thor’s voice turned to low growl: animalistic, bestial. “Then: let it be, as you wish.”

The hands on him were not placating now. They had become instead those of a warrior roused to war, callused and grasping and as unrelenting as manacles. Loki attempted to yank himself free once more, but he did it in the full knowledge it would not work. But then he knew too that in response Thor would only pull him in closer. The moment he did, Thor’s his hot mouth closed over his own, swallowing any words Loki might have screamed at him.

So he bit down. Hard.

Thor reared back, one hand clasped to his mouth. When he pulled it away, the motion revealed both lips and chin stained with bright crimson. Thor appeared transfixed, staring at his cupped palm, which must had been painted in the same first blood. Loki himself did not move, unable to look away, the air heavy and ionised on his skin. Then Thor’s eyes flicked up – the blue of them sparked too bright, roiling silver, a lightning jar come to brilliant life.

“You should not have done that.”

The knife flashed into his hand, and a half-second later had been thrown without even a thought. But then there must have been something there, unconscious and unformed, because Loki but rarely missed his target. And this blade only grazed the exposed muscle of one great arm, a wash of blood seeping from the cut.

Thor spared it but only the most cursory of glances. Though he was no berserker, not at this moment, such a wound was but a mere scratch. Yet when he glanced up from beneath hooded eyelids, his mouth twisted, his expression had been set to violence. In the same second he made a movement downward, centring his weight, bending his knees – all the better from which to strike. Loki’s own weight shifted up upon his toes, long muscles stretching in the motion just before taking flight.

He had left his escape far too late. Thor was upon him in an impossible second. The terrible mass of his brother knocked any air from him, leaving him heaving, hands scrabbling for purchase as if that would pull breath into his lungs. But Thor was already yanking him up, tugging at his throat. The rip of leather and mail was followed by the slap of one hand on bare skin, hard against the rabbit-beat pulse in his throat. Lips and teeth then pressed upon the matching one on the other side. There was no touch to anything but there, but Loki arched his back and thrust his head back so far his spine felt fit to snap, as if he’d come even without arousal.

But that came too, fast and hard on its heels. His cock rubbed in his trousers, already too hard for comfort. But there was little to worry about – Thor’s hands had already reached down, were working fierce at lace and leather and button. With cock worked free, he clenched a hand around it. A shiver of energy followed, too strong, and Loki threw his head back and howled.

He would not tolerate the loss of him again. Nails drove into skin, scrabbling at him. Then scratches turned to blows that would not stop until Thor dropped his entire body weight upon him. A bestial thrust drove Loki down into the dirt – and even here, where there should have been no medium for it, stormclouds had arrived again. The sharp slap of raindrops hit upon his turned away face. Thunder moving through the ground, the way lightning did when it burned nerve and scarred skin. Something like laughter bubbled up in his chest and escaped while sounding more like a sob.

“Loki.” Grabbing his wrists Thor forced them up above his head. From the hips Loki bucked upward, and then his cock was caught between the clothed thighs. A grasping, greedy cry broke free, even as he found himself desperate again for air. Everything had come too harsh, too rough, too fast, and the rain pelted down with the force of loosed arrows. Still Thor rose over him, hair dangling, dripping sweat as his thighs opened. Loki groaned at the loss of contact, and he wanted to be there even as he wanted too to draw back a knee and drive it cruelly upward.

One hand held both wrists immobile while the other fumbled at his trousers. And Loki growled low, yanked free. Thor’s surprise at the manoeuvre gave Loki space enough to brace himself at shoulder and hip, push against one shoulder and shove him over. And there he himself pulled at Thor’s trousers, yanked just low enough to free cock and balls so he could grasp them in his hands and laugh.

“Loki.”

The growled warning meant nothing – not here, not now. “Mine,” he snarled, voice of a wolf about the plunge its muzzle deep into the bowels of its fallen prey. “You go nowhere without me.”

In the pounding rain, everything beneath them had become mud and stone. On his back Thor was a ruin, blond hair dirty and tangled, face bloodied and brilliant. The rain beat hard enough against his skin to bruise, blossoming blue and black and violent purple – and in Loki’s eyes, his brother had never more beautiful. So easy it was, to curve downward and take Thor’s cock into his mouth.

The heat of it burned, the taste bitter and rich upon tongue and lip. With obscene ease Loki slipped up and down its hard length, tongue flicking inside the heat of his mouth to curve up beneath the head. Above him, Thor groaned, the ground shrieking beneath the sudden claw of his fingers.

With a darkening grin Loki let the cock slide from his lips, resting his chin upon the damp skin of his groin as he looked upward, over the smooth plains of stomach to the broad rise and fall of his chest. This way he could clearly see that Thor’s breath came too quick, too hard – this would never last. Before it ended Loki wanted him naked, wanted to run his hands through the hard valley and hill of muscle he would find when Thor wore nothing but his skin and the invisible mantle of a king wrought of thunder and storm.

But right now, just his cock could be enough. Thor’s disappearance from his life had left only emptiness – and Loki wanted him back inside. Loki just wanted him _back_. Without further thought he rose just enough to tug at his trousers, to pull them down and off; Thor’s hand had moved to slick itself over his cock, keeping himself ready. Loki himself required no further preparation. He rose, but only enough to fall again. Much as he’d wanted it, _needed_ it to be this way, it was almost too much; breathing hard, Loki bent over his brother, tried to breathe through the pain of it. Rain ran in rivulets down his forehead, pooling in the hollow of Thor’s collarbones.

“Loki.” He whispered it, too reverent, too precious. Loki closed his eyes tight, shuddered around the heat buried deep inside his ass.

“Shut _up_ , Thor.”

Laughter rumbled between them – and it was out of place, too quick, for it was _followed_ by the flash of lightning strike, one after the other. But then Loki had never cared truly for the proper order of things. Thrusting his head back and his hips forward, he let it shimmer through him as both pleasure and pain. His own laughter had become something dark and bright and perfect. In this it was a cycle, constant and unbreakable as the ourobos: rising up, falling down. Again and again, and always at its heartbeat centre remained Thor.

Hands closed about his hips, holding him in the up stroke, trembling and tender. When Loki glanced down again, it was to find his brother on his back in the mud, shining and strange and keeping him a moment away from his pleasure.

“I love you,” he whispered, and Loki’s fingers gouged into his golden skin.

“I _hate_ you.”

And he laughed, bright and simple and free. “I know.”

Though Thor let him go, it was no escape, nor abandonment. Caught on him, Loki leaned forward, fingers fisting in his hair. As his mouth demanded kiss after kiss, the grind of his hips became something both circling and broken. He broke off their kisses but only to breathe, each snatch of air staccato short, like some half-formed word to match every broken thought.

When Thor came, it felt very sudden and very strange. With hands upon his hips again Thor held him still, holding him down, filling him with charged warmth. Even though his own climax remained just out of reach Loki fell forward. But Thor rose up to meet him, keeping him close.

“Loki.” As if seeking to prove his brother was real, wide long-fingered hands moved quick and repetitive over his hair, each pass slick and smooth. And then they were gone, but not far; instead they tugged at the fixtures of his clothes, stripping him naked in what felt to be scarce seconds. Then Thor shed his own and Loki could do nothing but sigh, drawing Thor closer the moment his brother returned to his immediate orbit.

Even with the mud beneath them, the rain was constant, soft, washing everything away. It left his mind hazy, somehow unfamiliar in this lack of directed thought or emotion. Even with Thor’s cock withdrawn, Loki still felt him inside. That presence seemed to pulse like a second heartbeat. His brother’s hands moved over his face, his throat, his chest. Then they went deeper: with a trailing soft purpose his fingertips only skimmed over waist and abdomen, preferring instead to tremble a path down to his thighs, to grasp the cock still hard between.

Loki’s own hands tightened upon Thor’s waist, half-dreaming; and Thor chuckled, began a slow sinuous twist of fingers, slick with rain and spend. Then Thor took to his own surprise – two fingers dipped low, then drove up inside. Loki’s back arched, hard and hurting. Then he simply surrendered to sensation. Lying back with arms spread wide, he gasped where three fingers curled upward, fingertips dragging over the place that most craved relentless pressure. With a deadly grin, his other hand moved back. Loki scarce saw it call to his weapon before Mjölnir slammed into his palm. Then, with one hand upon the haft of the hammer and the fingers of the other curled deep into Loki, Thor called the storm. A current screamed through him, Thor arching as if made entirely of lightning himself – and Loki came hard, near-convulsing as warmth spread filament-like over his own stomach.

The sensation he felt next was the gentle working of his brother’s lips and tongue upon his skin. Loki’s hand drifted down, fingers tangling in his brother’s muddied and tangled hair. Yet Thor did not miss where his eyes strayed. With a chuckle he paused in his work, resting chin upon the slow movement of Loki’s abdomen.

“She always did have a liking for you.”

He snorted, looked away. “So you say.”

“So I _know_.”

But Thor said nothing further upon a subject they both already had been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Instead he gently moved upwards; rather than attempting to gather Loki into his arms, Thor instead lay shoulder to shoulder with him. They’d spent many an evening like this, as children: staring up at either the novae-riddled daytime skies, or the scattered stars of the night. With the fading of the storm, it felt as if every sin of those times passed before might just be washed away.

“This should not have been possible.”

The laughter rolled low in Thor’s throat, more the warning brontide of approaching storm than anything like mirth. “He is still dead.”

“No, idiot. _This_.” One hand splashed down into the mud. He didn’t let the sound of it stand alone; cupping some in his palm, he flicked it into his brother’s face. “There is no atmosphere. This stupid storm of yours should never have happened.”

Thor wiped it away with the back of one hand, grin bright and dangerous where it glinted in the remainder of the long-stopped rain. “Well, we do have some strange proclivities, you and I.”

Loki could not but help meet that with a crooked grin of his own. Then he turned his attention back to the star-riddled alien sky. Empty now of both atmospheric disturbance and living creature, it could not remain so for long.

“Dead or not, he still has his allies.”

The hollowness of those words impressed no fear upon Thor. His great shoulders moved in a slow shrug. “So do we.”

“Those allies are _yours_.”

“What’s yours is mine, and mine is yours.” Though unconvinced by the acid of Loki’s glare, he added, “You bring enemies and I bring allies, but I suppose it will even out eventually. Or even reverse. We’ll have time.”

“Will we.”

The dubious sarcasm of those words had Thor rising from the mud, shaking his hair out like a particularly badly-trained pup. “Loki,” he said, and then as his brother rose his ease seemed to flow away with it. “Where do you plan going to go now?”

Though he had spotted at least some of his scattered clothing, Loki did not yet reach for it. His back was a still mud-flecked white plain in the dusk of the Sanctuary. “Who knows?” he intoned, low and very, very flat.

Thor’s answer managed to be quiet while commanding that all must listen to each and every word. “I will always welcome you home.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot.” Yet he did not have the strength for anger when he turned around, his face now a tired jumble of emotion and exhaustion. “Do you really think Asgard would have me back? Or at least, back in anything but the cell they put me in originally?”

“That was Father.”

“How fortunate you brought that up.” His smile turned crystalline, ready to fracture and pierce in a matter of seconds. “What did he say to you on Midgard?”

Still in the mud, Thor pressed his lips together. “That you and he had come to…an understanding. And given that understanding, he supported me in aiding you to retrieve the infinity stones.” And then he barked a laugh, pulling one hand back through his hair and only making the mess of it worse. “Not that I cared much for his approval. I would have done it with or without Father’s consent.”

“Of course you would have.”

Thor narrowed his eyes. “I wish I could tell when you are being facetious.”

“If a thousand years hasn’t taught you, nothing will,” he muttered. And then he scowled. “But yes, Odin gave his approval to my mission to seek the stones. Of course it wasn’t so much to save his erstwhile son from the wrath of a Titan – the neutralisation of Thanos was useful, but it was only a means to an end.”

“He never wanted you dead, Loki.”

“That’s not what he told me at my sentencing.” His brother’s expression twisted, and Loki hated it. Such petty fury had never suited Thor well. Waving one hand, he perhaps even meant it when he said, “But it doesn’t matter now. Because he wished for the stones to be found, and he knew a thousand years of habit could not be broken.” Thor’s face had now melted into something like bewilderment, and Loki rolled his eyes sky-high. “He knew I would need _you_ to come on my little quest. Isn’t that how it always was, when we were children and then adolescents? Thor and Loki, adventuring across the worlds together?”

But not even Thor could be appeased by Loki’s offhandedness now. “What does he want?” he asked, flat. Loki’s shoulder slumped, though his tone was almost accusing.

“You.” When Thor looked fit to complain, he said, sharp and harsh, “He wants you to take your throne.”

“Loki.”

But Loki did not allow him any opportunity to speak further, rushing onwards too quick to appear as nonchalant as he might wish. “Only the King of Asgard can pardon my crimes and allow me back into the city, and the golden realm beyond her gates.” And he gave a laugh as short as the fall of an executioner’s blade. “Odin will not do it. But then Odin need not be king.”

“ _Loki_.”

“The choice is yours.” And he grinned, eyes salt-damp and bleeding water from their crinkled edges. “Though I am more than well-acquainted with the fact you have no desire to sit the throne.”

It looked very much as if Thor had taken a blow to the head, that his mind ached and he had no idea what to do about the agony of it. “That’s not it,” he said, sharp and short. “I…I just…” And he closed his eyes, as if the light of life itself hurt to look upon. “I never thought to be a king alone.”

Loki snorted. “Oh, I am sure you will find your queen.”

“I do not want a queen,” he said, hard and sharp, and then before Loki could speak: “I want a fellow king.” In the silence that followed, his voice softened to something almost like a plea. “Loki. I want a diarchy.”

“I didn’t realise you even knew the meaning of the word.”

“Oh, now I _know_ you’re being facetious.” Every inch of his broad body hummed with frustrated energy. And then he was on his feet, the bare skin of them slapping in the mud as he began a restless pace. “Loki, I always knew the crown would come to me eventually. When I came to Midgard to be with Jane, I was…perhaps not running away. I knew what would come later. I just…I wanted to stop. Just… _stop_.”

“Thor.” His whole body had begun to tremble, and he did not understand why. Or perhaps he did not wish to acknowledge why, though Thor’s agitated pace only increased, denying him escape.

“I will take my throne. I will pardon you.” He stopped dead, turned on his heel, fixed his eyes upon him alone. “And then you shall take yours beside mine, and we both shall have all we ever wanted of this life.”

He’d meant it to come out like an accusation. It was more like a wail of despair. “You are a dreamer.”

It only made him laugh. “A thousand years, Loki, and still you sound surprised.”

His knees would no longer support him. Upon the ground, Loki supported his aching head between both his hands, and closed his eyes against everything around them both. “This is foolishness.”

His brother’s steps were sure, but nearly soundless where they brought him to Loki’s side. “Perhaps,” he murmured, and his bulk pressed warm and broad against Loki’s side where he sat down beside him. Then Thor nudged him, a little too hard to be called gentle. “But it is what we have.”

The simple truth of that pronouncement kept them both quiet. Wrapping his arms about drawn up knees, Loki rested his chin between them, bit his lip. He didn’t need Frigga to tell him this was the pose of a thousand childhood dilemmas; she’d so often found him in the garden just like this. But in this moment, he had only Thor.

His voice cracked on the very first syllable. “I was afraid you wouldn’t take it. The throne.” He wanted nothing more than to look into his brother’s face as he spoke. Fear meant he could do everything but. “So I…I just hoped that wherever you went, you would take me with you.”

It had been agony to say it aloud. Yet the pain he found on his brother’s face hurt almost as much as dying had.

“So…so this is not what you truly wanted?” In his nudity now he seemed strangely very small, an uncertain child. “It was only…that I might keep you?”

Loki laughed, cold and croaking, a raven’s scornful cry. “I told myself that,” he said, half-bitter in his despair. “But…a thousand years. We both know what a liar I am.”

Thor’s arm came about his back – then, the other around his front. With heads bowed together they might as well have been children shivering beneath the sky, orphaned and alone. But Loki sighed, shifted closer, felt the trembling cease. They were together. The shift of the unfamiliar stars would end. They would go home.

Thor shifted beside him, raised his head. “I assume you would know, then, if Father has some plan for the infinity stones?”

“What, are you worried what havoc I shall wreak with them?” The baleful look Thor gifted Loki then actually made him laugh. “I think the last few seasons have quite curtailed my appetite for them, as a matter of fact. And you are correct.”

The gauntlet lay not a few feet from them. Now just a chain of six stones, it seemed scarcely capable of the reality-warping possibilities it held within the facets of each of its components. Loki watched those colours for a long moment, an incomplete spectrum that called for a master.

_But these are no servants six._

“The Allfather wanted you on the throne to put you in your place, certainly,” Loki said instead, slow and careful. He did not reach for the stones. “But Odin is an old man now. He wishes to find a new place for himself beyond the throne of Asgard.”

“Do you think then it is wise to give them to him?”

Startled, Loki turned his eyes back to his brother. Nothing in him could ever had believed Thor would gainsay their father. Slowly he shook his head, and did not look back to the gauntlet or its complement of stones. “Odin is a man broken by thousands of years upon his throne. Power has brought him nothing but bitter age and a broken family, his friends few and often only through political machination.” When he laughed, it was more exhaustion than mirth driving its sound. “If there is a character in this poor bard’s tale who is done with power, it is the Allfather.”

“Did he tell you what he will do with them?”

“Scatter them, I presume.” This time he could not find it in himself to laugh at all, genuinely meant or not. “He will take his stick and his cloak and he will wander the worlds, leaving them to lie restless in his wake.”

Loki closed his eyes almost as soon as he’d spoken the words. It troubled him beyond expression, this image of his once-father in the guise of a simple beggar, moving from realm to realm with a face belonging to no-one and nowhere.

Thor’s hand rested light upon his chest, just over the place where his heartbeat jumped and stuttered. “Where will he leave them?”

Amused and weary both, Loki opened his eyes, cocked one eyebrow. “You believe he would tell me where?”

“I believe you would ask.”

Loki did not bother denying that. Still he shook his head. “No. I do not know.” He shifted to suppress a shiver, skin beginning to goose-pebble even as he realised uneven stone was no comfortable seat. And he sighed. “Odin Borsson is not the only one to have grown weary of the trappings of power.”

In the quiet that followed, he remained still while Thor stirred himself to motion. Apparently he had begun to gather up the scattered remnants of their clothing. Loki did not deign to help. Lost in half-formed thought, he just about leapt from his skin when his brother’s crimson cloak fell about his shoulders. After accepting with cool grace Thor’s apologetic grin, long fingers just beginning to feel the nip of cold air, Loki gathered it close at his throat. Following Thor’s glance upward, he did not have to wonder long at his brother’s uncertain expression.

“We should call to Heimdall,” Thor said almost immediately, as if catching that unspoken question. Then he winced, and hard. Loki felt his skin prickle along with the vaguest beginnings of sudden temper.

“What?”

The demand threw Thor, though his stuttered half-reply suggested he didn’t quite understand his own thoughts himself. “I just…he must…”

“Are you _ashamed_?”

“No.” Although he first appeared on the verge of saying something more, Thor then drew in a deep breath, let it go with a deep exhalation that all but whistled with surrender. “Just…it’s awkward.”

“Did you ever concern yourself with his attentions any other time you were fucking someone?”

One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Occasionally.” Any amusement disappeared just rapidly as it had come, but it was not replaced with the embarrassment of before. Instead, Thor’s expression settled into something far closer to wry determination. “But then I do suppose this is something he will need to become accustomed to.”

Loki, who had expected something far closer to resignation, raised both eyebrows in the gesture he’d used since childhood to indicate the end of his patience. “Or he might learn to mind his own business.”

“That, too.” One arm draped about his shoulder; it did not remain brotherly, not when Thor moved his hand to catch Loki’s chin, dipping his own head close so his words might serve as a breathless kiss. “Either way, it is not as if I am about to stop.”

In such a headlock Loki had no chance of escape. He just rolled his eyes. “You never know when to stop.”

“That can be for the best.” But even though he stole another kiss before letting his hand fall away, bravado gave rapid way to uncertainty. “…yes?”

Loki chose not to answer immediately. With the cape still warm about his shoulders, he let his eyes roam. For all the things that might have caught his eye, only one of them truly mattered: the sanctuary stood empty of its master. “Yes.” The words came very quiet, resonant with truth. “Yes, sometimes your bull-headed stupidity is actually for the best.”

“But only because you’re there to curtail the worst of it.” Thor had come to stand very close to him once more, glorious in his nudity despite the remnants of their battles, both physical and sexual. And his wry grin made him more beautiful yet where he dipped his head close to Loki’s face, one hand light upon his own curling hair. “I always thought I had been born strong. But I just never knew any better. Because I always had you until I didn’t and then I realised.” He then smacked a surprisingly noisy kiss on his forehead, one arm tight about his waist. “Then I _knew_.”

“Thor.” He should have shoved him away. “You sentimental idiot.”

He only beamed in return. “Always.”

They dressed as best they could, given what remained of their clothing was ragged and torn. Still they would be dual princes returning to their kingdom. Thor called to the gatekeeper, one arm tight about Loki’s waist, as if terribly afraid at the last second Loki might choose to bolt after all. He did not. Loki’s own arm had curled tight about Thor’s waist in return. But though Loki let go when they arrived, he met Heimdall’s golden eyes with a stare of his own: emotionless, shameless, without regret.

The gatekeeper blinked only once. Then he looked to Thor, and bowed his head to them both.

“My prince,” he said, voice a low and pleasing bass melody, “please allow me to reassure you that while I do see everything that passes beneath my gaze, I do not _watch_ everything.”

Loki stiffened, and he barely just choked back laughter when Thor flushed an absolutely brilliant crimson. “I…I see.”

“As do we all.” Heimdall paused. “Even when we rather we would not.”

Though he and the gatekeeper might never see eye to eye, Loki could not prevent the broad grin that crossed his face at Heimdall’s dry delivery of those words. The gatekeeper’s face but rarely betrayed his emotions, yet Loki did not believe he had imagined the amusement in those golden eyes before he returned them to his watch. But then, Loki had never been able to entirely distrust anyone his mother had admired, all-seeing gaze or no.

The rainbow bridge stretched before them, a glittering path leading all the way back to Asgard. Despite the trepidation such homecoming aroused in him, Loki could not help but close his eyes, tilt his head backward. The crystallised child of the Vanadís sang a light tune beneath his feet, the starlight of Asgard’s outer limits warm upon the skin he shared again with the Aesir. Given recent events it should not have revitalised him so. But then, a thousand years could not be so easily pushed aside. If he had learned but one sure truth in these mad days, it would be that.

Thor’s eyes rested upon him. Even now he could still feel the faint hum of the stones in their gauntlet, never quite silent even when no-one attempted to sate their lusts with their power.

“We should take them to Father.” One hand moved to the leather satchel hung again from his belt, filthy with mud and other matter that was likely unspeakable. “And then I shall tell him that I will take a shared throne.”

He came over first very hot, then very cold. “No.”

“Loki—”

“Oh, don’t look at me like I’m going to hare off and start killing all your friends again.” But Loki himself could not look at Thor. With arms folded across his chest, as if that might mask the tremor of his entire body, he turned his eyes to the skies above and below the bridge and shook his head. “I just helped you save the universe. I’m tired. Forgive me if I do not want to speak with Odin Borrson until I’ve had some time to myself.”

“I understand, I…”

Comprehension of Loki’s thoughts or no – and Loki rather thought _no_ , for all he could not deny his brother’s efforts to untangle some of the intricacies of his mind – Thor’s words drifted to silence. Something like pity drove him forward, one hand light upon the battered elven-steel of Thor’s vambrace. “Give them to Heimdall,” he advised, and in his own wry smile could sense something of their mother. “We can see Odin tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he echoed, and his concurrence grew stronger with each repetition. “Yes, tomorrow – but there still remains something I must do today.”

“Yes. Me.”

Startled at how swift Loki’s movement had been, slinking close so that he might press against him from shoulder to hip, Thor seemed at first quite lost for words. Then, he cleared his throat, looking almost hunted. “I – but I already have.”

Loki snorted, one long-fingered hand sneaking about to grab a twist of skin just above the waistline of his trousers. At the pinch, Thor gave an undignified yelp, followed with a baleful look that did not make Loki ashamed of himself one little bit. “Once is hardly enough. Don’t you remember? My nature does not lend well to satisfaction.” Tilting his chin upward, he challenged with an easy smirk: “Or have you already surrendered?”

The light cuff that skimmed the top of his head was a gesture from long-ago childhood. “I will make you scream for mercy yet,” he promised. “But I must ensure that Jane is safe.”

The name, once upon a time, would have knifed through him with the cold efficiency of a Jötunn blade. Now Loki pushed the twinge aside, gave a scoffing little laugh. “You and your obsession with Midgard.”

“No, but we must thank them for their help,” Thor insisted – though his earnestness evaporated but a moment later when he took in Loki’s smirk. His own smile was something far softer, the play of dawn through a lover’s curtains. “And then I will come home,” he said, the gentle oath of one who could keep such promise with the aid or armies. “To you.”

Loki’s shoulders moved in careless rise and fall. “If I am still here.”

“Loki.” But there was little warning or fear in it. Instead, Thor’s head moved in a decisive little nod that had Loki’s suspicions sparking danger even before he added, “Fine. You will come with me.”

“I will _not_.”

Though he made no motion to take him by hand or by arm, or by any kind of force whatsoever, Thor’s tone brooked no argument. “Did I phrase it as a choice?”

“I don’t know. Do you enjoy having your bollocks?”

Standing there together, upon the bridge connecting Asgard to the rest of the worlds entire, Loki scowled at his brother. The imperious nature of his earlier statements vanished with but the passing of a second; opening his eyes very wide, dipping his head low like a hunting hound begging a treat from one of the stable boys, Thor said very softly, “Please?”

“Don’t.”

Thor but opened his eyes a little wider. “ _Please_ , Loki?”

“Oh Norns.” With his face buried in his hands, no-one might now how close he was to helpless, hopeless laughter. “One day I truly will kill you. I swear it.”

“Not today.”

The satisfaction in that had Loki glaring up at him. “Tomorrow, then,” he said, casual careless warning. “There always comes tomorrow, Thor.”

“And for all the tomorrows in the world,” he said, slinging an arm again about his shoulders, “I shall always risk it indeed.”

 

*****

 

The acrid sting of the city’s breath hit the back of his throat hard, and Loki forced himself to let it into his lungs. He would never have much care for Thor’s precious little Midgard, whether or not the mortals finally learned to caretake their own environment or not. Yet even he had to admit, as he blinked back the Terran sun, that today something rather lovely lit the damnable place from within. Loki suspected it might have something to do with how soon they would be leaving.

Neither had dressed in customary full regalia. Rather both had chosen well-tailored suits, Loki’s of a darker hue than Thor’s; the quality of such workmanship was one thing he would give the Midgardians, though he’d seen bootlegged clothing in Knowhere that had as much grace. But like everything, it suited his brother alarmingly well. Thor had also pulled his hair back into a full ponytail, something rarely done on Asgard since the passing of childhood. It gave his features a kind of gravity and poise that had Loki wishing to reach forward, to tug its binding free, to bury his face in golden strands and forget the rest of the world existed.

He must have made some disgusted sound aloud. Thor blinked over at him, eyebrows lightly furrowed. “Something wrong?

“Isn’t there always?”

Despite the dry irritation Loki had imbued the words with, Thor only laughed. “You must learn to cheer up, my brother.”

“You dragged me here from a cosmic battle, and now you expect me to be grateful for it?” Rolling his eyes, Loki kept his light step quick enough that even his brother’s long legs had to quicken to keep up. “You never do ask for much, do you.”

Heimdall had not deposited them far from the modest dwelling where Thor’s mortal lived. As they came upon that domicile of brick and damp wood, Loki found his throat tight and his hands tighter still. He could not thank her for what she had done, but then he could not censure her for it either. It would be so much easier to turn away from her mayfly life, to let her fade away while their lives only went on and on. But Thor, of course, all but bounded to her door like a puppy returned home. Despite the button that connected presumably to a bell, he beat a smart rap upon the door instead. He must have felt Loki’s scowl, because he turned to him with a grin both promissory and apologetic.

“We will soon be home, Loki.”

“So you say.” Stepping up beside him, stepping to that accustomed place at his brother’s left hand, Loki pressed his lips together. “I have the feeling this could take hours, if any of your other victory celebrations are anything to go by.”

“Then celebrate with us.”

“My idea of celebration is not really meant for polite company.” When Thor looked about to open his mouth to complain of Loki’s habits of solitude and study, he leaned forward, lips almost moving over the lobe of one ear as he whispered, “It mostly involves me wrapping my hands about your bollocks and dragging you to where I want you.”

First his eyes blinked. Then his pupils dilated so that barely a ring of blue remained about their dark centres, lips curving up at their corners. “Hold that thought,” he rumbled, voice a low growl; already he turned to where the door had opened. “Lady Darcy! I bring good tidi—”

Loki yanked him hard, just out of the way of the thrust-forward weapon. Wide eyed, Thor made no motion to defend himself even when she made a second attempt. With hands held high in a universal gesture of surrender, he pleaded: “Darcy, what in the Norns?”

She brandished her little enhanced electricity weapon like a Valkyrie gone mad and feral both. “This is all your fault!”

“Well, yes.” Then he blinked, bewildered and dodging another swipe. “Well, _no_ , Loki and I saved the worlds together, but if not for Jane—”

“Jane?” The laughter that escaped her at that moment managed to be both startled and terrible. “Jane’s _gone_.”

Thor went very still, all humour gone. “What do you mean?”

The command of it swept through Loki like the promise of coming storm, and he was used to it; from the dazed expression upon the mortal girl’s face, it was no wonder the weapon had fallen to her side. But her words still managed to hold her usual mortal fire. “Some crazy bitch queen from hell came and took her. I’ve been screaming for your golden-eyed gatekeeper dude to tell us what the fuck ever since. What the hell took you so long?”

“Darcy.” The voice came from the dimness behind her, soft and sensible. “Calm down. They’re here now.”

The words were out of his mouth before he so much as thought them. “No, we are not.”

“ _Loki_.”

“No.” He turned on his brother, resisting only just the urge to seize him by well-tailored lapels and shout his denial right into his face. “This? This is over for us. We are done here.”

“You totally are _not_.”

Ignoring the girl, Loki kept his attention fixed fiercely upon his brother. “You promised me we would go home.”

But even before Thor spoke Loki knew the battle lost. The distance which had entered his eyes was too knowing, too fierce. This was not a being who might ever turn down a fair fight, especially not when he was invited. “I promised everyone they would go home. That they would have homes to go to.” But he did look him straight in the eyes now, apologetic even in his anticipation. “Loki. You know how I am.”

He still couldn’t keep it to himself. He supposed he never would be able to. “You said she was no helpless woman in a gilded tower. And yet at the first whiff of catastrophe, you run to her side!”

Thor just shook his head. “I will not leave her in Angrboða’s hands.”

For a moment Loki was too flabbergasted to speak. Then when the ability returned, his voice could barely form around one word, thrust out like a curse. “ _Angrboða_?”

“Yeah.” And Darcy Lewis had stepped forward, hands upon hips, the little black war-device crackling ominously in one hand. “Friends don’t let friends get eaten by blue witch creepy things. So let’s do this shit.”

Loki rolled his eyes skyward. There was no coming of the Bifröst yet. But then he could feel it in the air, just like the approaching storm that had begun to gather at his side. And he sighed, even as his skin prickled and his heart beat faster at the thought of seeing it break over the heads of those unsuspecting.

“Come, then,” and now his displeasure was anything but feigned. “Let the hero do what he must.”

“I told you that I’d make one of you yet.” And Thor laughed in the face of Loki’s glare, already taking Mjölnir from his belt as he looked skyward, ready to call down the heavens in service of his name.

_And mine_.

He smiled. Some things never did change. Others, they never stayed the same. He closed his eyes, and waited for chaos to come again. With the storm so close always at his side, he knew it would never be any other way at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and...that's more or less the end of it. There _is_ still an epilogue, which I am in the process of writing, but this signals the end of the plot proper. The rest is just the Scooby Gang taking an odd little side trip to frost giant land to tie up a few loose ends. And I missed Jane's voice. So.
> 
> Thank you so so much for reading this far. While this is pretty much the story as I had intended it to be in a plot sense, given I planned it out more or less when I started, given the length of time it's taken to write the quality of the story-telling likely took a sharp downward turn. And I am sorry for it. I just hope knowing the story in its entirety makes up for the shakiness of its execution.
> 
> Aside from the epilogue, this is likely my last real foray into these characters. Screw them up as I might (and undoubtedly have), they've always been a pleasure to write. And getting to mess about a bit with TDW, which really didn't meet many of my expectations, was fun too. I just hope coming this far down the rabbithole with me was worth it for you. <3 I will likely as not still be around on [tumblr](http://claricechiarasorcha.tumblr.com), though I suppose I ought to pay attention to original works after ignoring them for three years. But these Norse assholes will likely always hold a special place in my heart. Damn them all. But thank you. So much. <3 <3 <3


	19. 4.0: Chumeia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, an apology for the lateness of this. It ended up being far longer than I expected it to be. It also didn't really come out quite the way I expected or needed it to, but then over the last few months I've learned a few harsh truths about fanfic writing that you think I'd have picked up when I started doing it seventeen years ago. There's no need to blab on about it here, but suffice it to say my life's been a lot of mental and physical and emotional exhaustion these days, and though I finished this fic because I wanted it done, it wasn't easy. And the sad truth about fic is that you can spend hours of your life at it only to have one person's offhand remark bring the entire thing crashing down around your ears. We do this sort of thing for fun, after all, but when the fun's gone? I guess we gotta let go.
> 
> But I don't want to end it all on a downer note, so: there are people reading this fic who make me want to cry, because they made the risk of creating and putting my words out there worth it. It doesn't matter that it's over in the sense they made it possible in the first place. Thank you so much. Please enjoy what's left of the story, and know that it was for people like _you_ that I wrote it at all. As for myself: that's all she wrote. Time to get some sleep, now.  <3

But Thor did not have opportunity enough to call to Heimdall before the mortal girl leapt in front of them both. “Oh, nuh-uh. You’re not leaving us behind this time.”

Her compatriot, halfway between mortified and like-minded, reached out a hand that didn’t quite catch a grip. “Darcy, you can’t just—”

“We are totally coming with you.” Just out of the boy’s reach now, Darcy clamped onto Thor’s great right arm with the tenacity of a limpet. “Ian, grab the other one!”

The mortal’s eyes were very wide where they swivelled to meet his. Loki gave him his most charming smile in return. “Touch me, child, and you will know what it is to burn in the very heart of winter itself.”

“Wow, you are _so cute_ when you’re being creepy.” Though she made this announcement with something like wonder, her brow furrowed behind the thick rims of her eyeglasses, voice turning deep and doubtful. “And you’re not blue anymore. What happened to the blue? Special effect budget run out?”

“Darcy.” Oddly, Thor had chosen to become the voice of reason; odder still, for all his great strength, he appeared to be having some trouble extracting himself from a mortal girl’s grip. “I will not be held responsible for bringing you or Ian into danger.”

Her fingers dug deeper. “Hey, we’re grownups. We take responsibility for our own shit. Like the power bill.” As soon as the words were spoken, her determined face fell. “….which I totally didn’t pay last week. Oh, _shit_ , Jane’s going to murder me.”

“Well, she does have a friend who’s basically a giant battery, Darcy.”

Even as Loki himself barely smothered a chuckle at Ian’s dry retort, the girl’s face broke into a beaming smile almost fit to match one of Thor’s. “Point!” And now she turned that brilliance onto his brother, her resolve now giving her a striking resemblance to Sif. “So let’s go save her, she’s probably not going to kill me. And I’m cool with that. Besides: _witches_. You wouldn’t let us come last time. You owe us.”

By now Thor had given up on escape and appeared simply pole-axed. “There is but the one witch, and I don’t believe such a debt—”

“I haven’t the patience for this manner of puerile debate,” Loki interrupted, glacial and flat; Darcy turned to him with wide eyes and for the first time her grip on Thor loosened.

“ _Whoa_.”

Loki ignored her. “If the mortals wish to come, then allow it. As long as they are aware I am in no way responsible for their wellbeing, then they may do as they wish.”

“Oh, so Thor’s babysitting us?” With disturbing glee, she pressed her cheek to the bulging muscle of his upper arm. “Sweet. No curfew, right? Rescue missions can’t have curfews.”

Darcy’s bliss notwithstanding, Thor again tried to extricate himself with clear discomfort. “Loki—”

“Heimdall?” Turning his face to the sky, he folded his arms over his chest, raised his voice high and carrying. “Would you kindly do the honours?”

He regretted asking as soon as he spoke, expecting the gatekeeper to respond to him was a roll of the dice at best. Even before matters of kingship and treason theirs had always been an awkward relationship. These days he understood it better. Frigga had doted upon Loki from a young age, while Heimdall had always held himself somewhat aloof from the younger prince, even before his name became synonymous with mischief and disaster. Even as a child Loki had sometimes wondered at thoughtful gaze that had might linger upon her just a moment too long. Perhaps even from infanthood Heimdall had been waiting for the snake in the queen’s cradle to strike her down.

The Bifröst did not come. Giving Thor a sideways look did not aid matters, as his brother had been distracted by something in the complete opposite direction. Flicking his own eyes that way did not improve matters. A bewildered looking Erik Selvig stood perhaps ten feet down the sidewalk from their motley little crew, battered leather bag in one hand and a plastic carrier in the other.

“Where has everybody been? I came round earlier and no-one was home, and I haven’t got my key.” Then his pale eyes darkened, lips curved violently downward. “And what’s _he_ doing here? You said he was dead!”

Already Ian fumbled a key from his pocket, handing over the jingling bundle with a short little laugh. “Does this mean there’s a free bed at the place you’ve been? Because I’m totally getting myself sectioned.”

Darcy let go of Thor, only to latch straight onto her paramour. “Ian, you’re not going to the nut house. You’re coming to see the wizard.”

Loki blinked, just once. “She is a witch.”

“Same difference,” Darcy said, breezy as if she had not just been flatly corrected by a semi-divine being who had tried to take over her planet. “Will she melt if I throw water on her, do you think?”

Selvig, eyes still fixed on Thor, spoke very even, and very quiet. “Do I actually _want_ to know what’s going on?”

“Probably not.” Although Thor, being as he was, immediately added, “Jane…well, Jane’s in trouble. We have to go help her.”

“Go where?”

“Jötunheimr.”

It seemed very much as if the girl was holding her breath, watching the man process this new information. Certainly when Selvig spoke again, frustration played very much second fiddle to outright disbelief. “What in the hell is she doing in Jötunheimr?”

“Long story,” Darcy said, and not without considerable speed. “And we gotta go. Unless…you want to come with? The more the merrier?”

“ _No_.” Startled, all eyes turned to Thor; he looked very close to embarrassed. “I am sorry, my friend. But I am not certain this is a journey to be made when you have so recently…been ill.”

Loki stirred from his silence, voice silk in its smooth menace. “I hardly believe the company would be to your standards, either.”

Though he could feel the warning in his brother’s gaze, Loki did not look away from the mortal man. To his credit, Selvig matched him moment for moment. “You were dead.”

Inclining his head, Loki added in a small shrug. “I was. Temporarily.”

“You don’t just _get better_ from being dead.”

“It is hardly so simple, no.” Amusing as flyting with the mortal might have been, Loki took a physical step backward; the distant ache of bone and mind seemed to reawaken with every movement. “Allow us to go collect the woman you see as a daughter, Dr. Selvig. Perhaps you prepare her a nice warm meal for her return.”

“Yeah, and make something for us! Make sure you get some decent coffee, too, we’re all out.”

But Selvig only had eyes for Loki. He had to wonder if the man would be insulted or not, if Loki told him that he remembered well what it had been like inside his mind. The knowledge and expertise Loki had required to open the portal using the tesseract had not been beyond his own capabilities, but there had been no time to acquire it for himself. Instead Loki had projected his need into the mortal’s mind, used him as a conduit, as a kind of automaton to realise his own requirements.

The human was under his own command now. Loki could still sense the scars of servitude, both those physical and not. It was in the way his clothes hung a little loose, the pallid tone of ageing skin, the dark smudges beneath his eyes. But they were bright, thoughtful, cunning in a way that was casual rather than cruel.

“Whether you truly wanted it for yourself or not,” Selvig observed, didactic and simple, “you still tried to destroy this planet.”

Loki’s smile was close-lipped and humourless. “And I failed. Take your satisfaction in that.”

One eyebrow arched. “You didn’t.”

“Erik.” Even though the tone brooked no argument, apology leaked from every movement as Thor placed an awkward hand upon the mortal’s shoulder. “This is not the time. I am sorry, but Jane—”

“Jane said you had always loved your brother,” Erik said, abrupt and cold, though he did not shake Thor’s hand away. “She also said _you_ said that in the old days he had been so different to the half-crazed psychopath we all met.” And now he too displayed one of those humourless smiles, where the situation was so ridiculous one ought to just laugh but in the end nothing was funny anymore. “And then she said you helped to save the universe.”

The mortal’s accusing gaze had moved to focus upon Loki alone, a cutting laser-like glare. “Yes, and I just repeated the endeavour. You’re entirely welcome.”

Selvig only shook his head; the gesture crawled under Loki’s skin, too paternal to be innocuous or easy. “You’re not one of the good guys.” That hurt, like needles stabbed under fingernails; then he shook his head again, as if clearing clouded thoughts. “But then maybe you don’t have to be. If you remember it’s the good guys who matter most to you. Or one of them, anyway.”

Loki went very cold. “What?”

The mortal’s eyes, in his memory, had been washed out and bleeding a blue too prismatic to be natural. Despite their naturally light colour, they were very dark now, unforgiving with the function of a free mind. “Barton said it first – doors open both ways.” And he rolled his eyes, as if the memory of it needled him too. “Never the talkative sort, that man, but he usually had something important to say whenever he bothered.” But all thoughts of Barton were pushed aside in the next moment; standing at full height, hands clenched at his sides, even this ageing mortal had a strange beauty and strength utterly his own.

“I’m not going to forgive you for what you did,” Selvig said, cold and clear. “But then, I don’t have to.”

Thor’s hand only hovered above his shoulder this time. “Erik.”

Selvig shook his head one last time. “Go get Jane.” Bending over to retrieve his belongings, keys jangling where he pulled them to the ready, he then turned away without looking once more at any of them. “I’ll be waiting. Right here.”

The door closed almost too gently behind him. A moment later, Darcy coughed, loud and forced.

“Yeah, well, that was awkward.”

The door opened again. “And _please_ tell me you’re not going to an ice realm dressed like that,” Selvig added, and then closed it again. In the silence that remained, not even Darcy had anything left to say.

In the end their dilemma had a simple enough solution, if not one particularly elegant. Thor had never retrieved the garments he had brought to Midgard for his and Jane’s own forays into Jötunheimr. Having located them, stuffed in a hallway closet, the girl and the boy dressed in the garments. Examining some of the papers Jane had left scattered upon the kitchen table, Loki found himself idly wondering if they shouldn’t gather a goat or two for the journey. Then Darcy was surveying the pair of them, hands on her hips – though given the layers of wool and leather and fur, it was hard to determine where one ended and the other began.

“If Papa Selvig won’t let us go out without our coats and galoshes, why do you guys get a free pass?”

“Because we are not mortal and he has no jurisdiction over our choices?”

Thor just laughed, the manner in which he clapped a hand on Loki’s back and unbalanced him quite ruined any gravity he’d infused the situation with. “No. Because we’ve got magic.”

Rolling his eyes didn’t change the facts, and for once Thor had them basically right. With the aid of seiðr Loki changed his own clothing to something thicker; with fur at his neck, shoulders, and wrists, as well as lining his surcoat, the insulation would be far better. It was with a faint twinge that he extended his fingers, then curled them inward again. The gloves fit perfectly. He hadn’t worn them in Jötunheimr since that time he had lost one there.

Turning his attention to his brother, he allowed Thor to call his own armour. With a flick of his own fingers and a brief blaze of seiðr, he supplemented the leather and metal with fur and thicker underclothing. Even as Thor ran an approving hand over his own shoulder, the mortal girl whistled, low and almost lovely.

“Holy shit.” She actually reached out one hand, withdrawing it before touching, as if afraid she might burn. “That’s like, magical girl-level transformation power.”

“I…thank you?”

Loki snorted. “Be glad he took that well. He’s started wars over less.” With his body making an easy sinuous curve, he then added, low enough so only Thor might hear, “Though you _are_ indeed a pretty little princess, and no mistake.”

Amused, Thor turned his head so that his lips just almost brushed his brother’s cheek. “Shall we?”

Not even the layers of wool and leather and fur could contain his shiver. “If we must.”

As they drew apart Loki noted they’d drawn an odd look from the girl, but it didn’t matter. As it was, out in the street, they’d been contending for some time with more than one curious pair of eyes peeking out through blind or curtain or just blatantly opened window. Loki nodded to Thor, and his brother grinned as he called the Bifröst down upon them at last.

The girl naturally almost lost herself meeting Heimdall; only Loki’s hand tight about her arm kept her upright when her knees gave way. Her own paramour proved to be of no particular use, too busy gaping at the mechanics of the Observatory. But thankfully Thor gave little time for anything beyond cursory introduction and request, and Heimdall opened the way to Jötunheimr with scarcely even a disapproving look.

 _He will be king, after all_ , Loki thought, mind humming with discontent. But when he glanced up, Thor’s eyes were on his alone.

 _We will both be king_.

The snow-crusted world was much the way he remembered it, though the cave he had co-opted for his own use was some distance. Loki still knew this area well enough. Angrboða had always had her uses to him, though it seemed she still expected some of him.

“Is it _supposed_ to be this cold?”

Loki stepped away from the group, lips pressed tightly together. The sound of the mortal girl’s voice was fit to give him a headache, though if asked he would have claimed merely to be surveying the lay of the land. In many ways it was but a formality. Hardly hospitable to even the Jötnar, the Járnvid held the ever present danger of avalanche through the icefall; the seracs there also waited to collapse merrily upon the heads of anyone fool enough to walk in their shadow. Any unseen crevasse could swallow even a frost beast whole. Loki didn’t realise how tense he held every muscle until his brother’s hand moved to lay gentle upon one fur-limned shoulder.

“Perhaps you would be more comfortable in your Jötunn skin.”

He hissed into the frigid air, a sound fit for the tongue of a serpent. “Tread carefully, brother,” he said, eyes fixed firmly ahead. “Do not assume that I wore that form for anything but necessity, and unwillingly at that.”

“And now Thanos is dead.”

Loki’s voice was clipped and cool. “Exactly.”

The two mortals had begun to explore, though they ventured not far from where the Bifröst had burned its afterimage even into the hard-packed snow of Jötunheimr. Their hearing would never have been strong enough to make out Thor’s words, even had he not chosen a voice so low that Loki himself struggled to hear him. “And so you shall never again be as you were born?”

The melancholy of his brother’s words prickled over his Asgardian skin. “This is neither the time nor the place.”

“No, but it is.” When Thor glanced to him, his smile was lopsided; he knew very well Loki could have pretended not to have heard a word of it. “Because we’re talking about it now, and we won’t again. Not if you have anything to say about the matter.”

“Very perceptive. Especially considering you realise this and still will not let it go.”

When Thor sighed, the air condensed before him, like a half-hearted storm unable to take true form. “It was a privilege.”

“It was a necessity.”

“It was always your choice. And it always will be.” Thor glanced to him again, skin ruddy now in the cool air. “I won’t say your appearance changes nothing, or means naught to me. It would be a lie unworthy of us both – because the truth is more difficult than that.”

Loki wanted to laugh, to mock. Instead he only sighed. “Why do you think I prefer to lie?”

He’d made a mistake, perhaps – said too much, maybe. Thor had again turned very quiet. Then, he shared a sigh of his own. “Perhaps you are right. This is not the time.”

“Surrender comes easier to you these days, I see.”

“I believe the word you’re looking for is actually compromise.” The two mortals had turned back from their own pitiful survey, and were staring. Loki glared back, even as Thor snorted, light. It made him scowl even around the bright twist in his heart. With eyes scanning the horizon, Loki sought quick for some distraction.

“Of all the times your beast might have been useful…”

Thor’s idiot face brightened, an impossible golden sun in a land of chill blue and indigo. “Mánagarm! Of course! Why did I not think of that?”

“Do you want the list of reasons, or just the summary? Because either one might be some time reading.”

The insult slid off Thor’s back like oil skittering across water; he’d been too long in the company of Loki to be goaded by so little. Raising the hammer, Thor smiled in a way that had Loki abruptly wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. Already the flicker of lightning began to rise upon the silver-grey uru, a dance of charge and deep blue plasma. Even in this form the unseen current of it got under Loki’s skin in ways not entirely uncomfortable.

“Would you stop that?” he snapped, too quick. “It’s distracting.”

Thor answered this with nothing more than a broad grin. Then he amped up the flow of current. Gritting his teeth, Loki flexed his fingers as they moved purposeful over the leathers of his surcoat.

“I have daggers and I am very familiar with where to stick them in you.”

“And _I_ am very familiar with my hammer and where to stick—”

“Do you want to save your mortal or not?” Loki demanded, ignoring completely the flush that threatened to rise up from his collar in betrayal of things better left unseen and unsaid. Thor just blinked, innocent as a child, but Loki knew the silver-plasma spark of mischief just behind the cool clear blue.

“Of course.” Now he actually pouted, even though the grin that followed just barely reassured Loki he was actually speaking with a grown warrior. “I just recall we never did determine whether or not you could sense current in this form as you do in the other.”

“We have already spoken of times and places.”

“We have.”

Darcy’s voice cut through the air like the strident call of a Valkyrie demanding her weregild. “Hey, are you guys just going to make goo-goo eyes at each other all day, or are we gonna go launch a rescue mission?”

Loki went very still, but Thor only guffawed, drawing close enough that he might give her a one-armed hug about her narrow shoulders. “I am afraid you have much to learn about being on a quest with Thor Odinson, Darcy.”

 _I’ve had a thousand years of it myself, and still he surprises me every time_.

Straightening his shoulders, Loki managed to sweep a disdainful gaze over them all. “Your beast seems disinclined to assist,” he observed, and when Thor looked fit to protest added with caustic demand: “So, what do you propose – shall we announce ourselves at the front door, or go in the back?”

Darcy pursed her lips, then nodded firmly. “Both. Both sounds good.”

Amused, even though he knew he shouldn’t be, Loki raised an eyebrow at her. “Do we have the personnel for such an offense?”

The boy blinked. “I…don’t think it matters.”

“What do you mean?”

The distant scream should never have had volume enough to strike such silence between them. It did so all the same. Then Thor turned, Mjölnir already sparking at the ready in his firm hand. “We must go. _Now_.”

“Calm down!” And though he had a point, Loki also knew the scorn in his voice was but fuel to the fire. “Not even you can carry three people,” he added, and felt himself swept close as a jaw settled rigid.

“Watch me.”

Loki actually had no particular need to watch. Such an experience was one he’d been suffering through since childhood: Thor, the perfect archetype of the hero, determined as always to live up to the name and be worthy of it. That had always been Loki’s experience of his brother. He had no reason to believe, despite all that had happened, that it would ever change. Even as he closed his eyes and grimaced, he knew it barely covered the wild grin beneath. Loki, agent and compatriot of chaos, would have it no other way.

 

*****

 

The Ironwood had changed not a bit, still as austere and dark as she remembered. It held all the charm and welcome of a fairytale forest, filled with wolves and witches waiting to swallow children whole. Jane turned back to the cave, and shuddered. In most of the stories she recalled, witches actually had a habit of taking home their prey and stuffing them into the oven.

“You really expect me to just walk in there?”

Much as she managed to keep her head held high and her voice remarkably even, Jane had the sinking sensation that Angrboða saw straight through her. “I am not giving you a choice,” she said, faintly amused. “You can walk in there, or stay out here. Be aware the latter decision will result in a rather swift death.”

Already the cold bit deep into her skin, moving through her veins to clench her heart into a staccato beat. Jane pursed her lips and kept the shiver at bay long enough to speak. “Sure, I can see that – but is there just a slow death waiting for me inside anyway?”

Her expression hardened, water flowing into glacial ice. Everything about her now resembled the cerulean-skinned creature who had emerged from the air itself to wrap dark-nailed fingers about her wrists and drag her through the secret places between worlds. Jane might have asked her how she did it, if not for the fact the Jötunn witch now appeared as hospitable as death row.

“I have something I wish to ask of the Odinson.” One elegant hand rose, fell; it reminded Jane of the loosed blade of a guillotine. “He may have you back when our bargain is complete.”

The coldness that swept through her now had nothing to do with the atmosphere. “You already had his promise.”

Thin-lipped as Angrboða’s expression was, there was still something of a smile behind it. “Oh, I did. Call it a form of insurance.”

“He’s got honour, you know. He’s kind of guy who keeps his promises…eventually.” Twisting her lips, and her fingers, Jane shifted her feet; although they kept her upright still, she could barely feel them. Utterly at ease, Angrboða shifted her slim shoulders, the thin silk of her dress like a second skin.

“Yes, he does have honour. Perhaps even too much.” Now her amusement became obvious, her body moving with sensual ease as she leaned close, dark hair slithering over her lowered shoulder. “He will not force the hand of another to fulfil his own obligations,” she explained, simple and soft, and then she laughed. “Not unless I provide some…leverage?”

Jane understood there would be little point in showing Angrboða her fear. That didn’t stop her last meal from lurching sideways in her stomach. By now she was losing sensation in her fingertips, and the thin air made it hard to breathe, rendering her thoughts unanchored and light. She never had worked out if Jötunheimr’s atmosphere was just less concentrated in oxygen than Earth’s, or if they were simply at altitude. In the end it didn’t matter. Jane didn’t have the luxury of time in this decision.

So she went in.

Though the temperature rose to a level slightly more conducive to mortal life, Jane found almost immediately that it bore only a superficial resemblance to the cave Loki had set up for himself. To some extent she supposed that was because Loki’s cave had been a temporary base of operations, whereas Angrboða’s was something far closer to a home. A low passage meandered its way deep into the bedrock, and even Jane had to watch her head. _So much for the_ _world of giants_ , she thought with grim humour, though she had met no Jötunn taller than Loki.

Soon enough the serpentine passage opened into something larger. The stone walls of the cave formed their own natural buttress, but Angrboða had lined them with carvings. Merely looking at them turned her stomach; feeling as though she had wandered into a cavern straight from Lovecraft, Jane swallowed hard against a dry throat. She couldn’t look back, but the images had rooted themselves deep in her unconscious: Gigeresque faces screaming and shrieking above twisting, sinuous bodies. Jane had seen no trees in the Járnvid. For the first time in her life Jane had begun to believe in curses and in something like voodoo.

Angrboða’s voice emerged from the shadows; she had moved so silent, Jane had to stifle a shriek just to hear her speak.

“Thor is the only person in the Nine Realms who has ever been able to make Loki do anything.”

Resolute in her determination not to look at the carvings again, Jane kept her eyes fixed upon Angrboða instead. “Yeah, I’m not sure that’s how it works,” she said, even as her heart crawled up into her throat and threatened to spill itself empty there. “So that’s what this is? A hostage situation? Some sort of bargaining game to make Thor make Loki do whatever you want?”

Angrboða gave another of her slithering sensuous shrugs. “He will do what I ask of him, or he shall not have you back.” Then she blinked, a faux innocence that left Jane’s skin prickling and cool. “At least, not in the same state he left you.”

“He can’t make Loki do anything Loki doesn’t want to do.”

Quiet as the words were, Angrboða showed no concern. “But he will not let you die,” she said, and the tone of her next words was completely unreadable. “Pretty little thing.”

Jane looked away. “That’s not what he sees in me.”

“Oh, I am certain he appreciates it all the same.” The scent of her was an odd thing; earth and brine and something like sweet incense. She leaned closer yet, crimson eyes searching, the way hunters examined their netted prey. “He will not let harm come to you. His honour would not allow it.” Leaning back, her voice turned careless as she moved away. “Besides, you do not live so long, you mortals. Yes, he will lose you. But he will want to make the most of you before he does.” When she turned back, her triumph was matched only by her incredulity. “He won’t let you die. Not yet. Not when there is much he still wants of you.”

So many things she might have said, and they all tangled upon her tongue. The matter was far more complicated than any such person could understand. When they had come together again, for the first time Jane had seen something in Thor that reminded her of Pete, the PhD boyfriend who had had a child with an ex. While Pete was over his girlfriend, the kid was a tie more permanent than erstwhile lust. Jane had liked Pete. She’d liked him a lot. Just not enough to settle for always being second best.

In the end she’d given Thor a lot more time than he’d actually earned. Their two years of separation, not entirely necessary, would have been more than she could stand from anyone else. But he was different. He was so much potential, the physical realisation of so many childhood dreams. But even after he had come back to her in London she’d known he was different from the transient who had become her friend in New Mexico. Having a home and a purpose changed all his priorities.

But he’d been so careful with her the second time around. In those London days, so far removed from New Mexico, from Asgard, Thor had taken his time with her and with their relationship. Though she’d wanted so much to know the movement of his body against hers, inside hers, she’d thought she’d come to terms with why he had hesitated. Then this damned witch tore away the Band-Aid, revealed the wound to be not only unhealed, but a suppurating, weeping infection.

“He doesn’t want me.”

The flat pronunciation of the statement had no effect upon her; rolling crimson eyes, Angrboða waved her pain away. “Don’t be a fool. Or unnecessarily coy. I saw the way he looked at you.”

 _But you haven’t seen the way he looks at Loki_.

In truth Jane did not envy Thor his relationship with Loki at all. But then, in some mad way, she _did_. Years of training in logical thought, and she knew she would never understand how they could swing pendulum-like from hate to love, with the weight and momentum of it remaining always the same. Or perhaps it was different, though only in its manifestation.

Jane had no real proof of anything unusual going on between the two brothers. There still there had been something odd to him, when Thor had come to her before sending her home. She couldn’t resent that; warriors went to war, and she hadn’t really thought an astrophysicist would have much place in pitched physical battle against a mad Titan. Yet he had explained to her Loki’s plan, and she had told him the variations in how he’d spun things to her. When he had asked her to recalibrate the gauntlet she’d trusted his judgement. It was a fool’s errand and they had both known it – but they’d also both known Thor would do nothing to intentionally harm his little brother.

_Even if you don’t always look at him like an elder brother would._

But she could not regret the choice he had made – that Thor had been sensible enough to end things before they even started. Thor would never be her lover. But she knew he would always be her friend.

“I suppose the point’s moot, either way,” Jane said to the witch, arms folded tight across her chest. “He’ll come, and he’ll kick your ass, and I’ll go home and you’ll get diddly-squat.” And now she smiled, the angelic one that had made her father despair of ever talking her into doing something she didn’t want to do. “So can I sit down to wait, or are you going to make me stand the whole time?”

The frost giantess smiled in return, and not entirely unkindly. “Come with me.”

Any residual amusement evaporated with her every fluid movement, which led them both deeper into the cave, but not far. It had nothing in the way of locked doors, but then she supposed it had little need of them. While Jane didn’t understand what Loki referred to as seiðr – presuming that was what Angrboða herself practised – she did not doubt getting out would be easy. Getting to somewhere beyond the Járnvid, where she could call to Heimdall, would be anything but.

Two steps into the great open space, and she sneezed – once, twice, the third time most violent. “This place is like a junkyard.”

“I do not generally feel inclined to adjust the ambience to suit my prisoners.”

A shiver ran through her – not so much from the old, but rather the stark statement of what she was. On its heels came the implication that she was not the first. Jane tightened her hands on her upper arms, and concentrated on the cold rather than the coil of fear low in her gut.

“You could at least stop me from freezing to death before Thor even gets the message that I’m here.” When she glanced back, she rolled her eyes for effect. “Because no matter what else is going on, if I’m an ice cube when he arrives, he’s going to be _super_ pissed.”

Rather than appearing irritated by Jane’s insolence, Angrboða just raised one arm; lovely and blue, veined with the raised keloid markings of her heritage, it swept a gentle arc about the chamber. “As you say, it is a junkyard, yes? Find your own warmth.”

Jane cocked an eyebrow. “You really want me poking around your workshop?”

“Storeroom, child. And a largely obsolete one at that.” Her hand now moved back through the heavy curtain of her dark hair, casual and careless. “You can try to escape if you wish, Jane Foster. But then where will you go?”

With her arms now crossed over her chest again, Angrboða gave no quarter – and the mockery in those crimson eyes promised no reprieve. Jane turned away and moved deep into the stacks and shelves. Loathe as she was to admit it, she hovered somewhere close to tears as she moved amongst the towers of junk. At least this cold was dry, was not the kind of awful dampness that curled in and around bones and left even the youngest joints aching.

Fortunately she didn’t have to look too far. While it was not exactly a cloak, more something like a smallish blanket, her first discovery was better than the light sweater and jeans she’d been wearing when Angrboða had dragged her between worlds. The fur on it reminded her of rabbit, but given the sheer size of the uninterrupted pelt, said rabbit would have been the size of a small pony.

“Or maybe that’s what happened to the Easter bunny,” she muttered, and sneezed.

The fur did at least give her some warmth, as the frost giant seemed utterly content without any fire or alternate heat source for her own warmth. Jane’s nose still ran freely as she wandered around. Wiping it unselfconsciously on the pelt, she shrugged the vulgarity of the gesture aside; it wasn’t like she planned to keep it. Or stay. Either she would escape, or Thor would tear the place from its foundations. The former seemed more preferable. She wasn’t some damn helpless princess waiting for a prince charming. Especially when this particular space alien prince seemed to have a preference for another prince who seemed quite capable of looking after himself.

As she walked, she made only the vaguest exploration of the stacks themselves. There appeared to be no real order to the many odd items Angrboða had collected. Still, as she was about to turn another countless corner, Jane’s peripheral vision caught on something odd.

It was light enough in her hands, a burnt transparent gold even in the dim light of the cave. Amber, perhaps – and it had some great bizarre insect caught inside. Shuddering, she wanted to look away, but couldn’t; her mind was caught on its proboscis, one that looked fit enough to suck a man’s eyeball from his skull. Even without the bug it was still an unusual artefact. Long as her forearm and thick as her wrist, it seemed milled or processed or shaped by forces other than those natural. Perhaps the witch had taken it as some sort of wand, but having found no immediate use—

Something in her mind startled her, shifting sudden just below the level of conscious thought. Jane went very still. A moment later, she turned the wand over in her hands. Yes: amber, or something near enough to it. Of that much, at least, she could be sure.

Carefully Jane set it aside, but noted where it was. Angrboða had no interest in her guest, as long as she could hear movement that suggested she hadn’t frozen yet. A list was forming in her mind, and her hands were careful as she began to set about filling it.

The fur she already wore around her shoulders. A glass jar proved easily found. A metal thin and pliable enough for her purpose proved somewhat harder. A small quantity of gold leaf was about the best she could do; working it around the glass both inside and out could prove tricky, but not impossible. The materials hunt was completed with an odd kind of putty to act as a stopper, with a nail driven through the middle and into the jar itself. Water might be somewhat more difficult to acquire outright, but Jane figured she could request it directly from Angrboða if she had to, pleading again the case of a hostage’s general wellbeing.

For the meantime she didn’t seek out the Jötunn, instead working quietly, quickly with her makeshift tools. She was not even truly considering what she was doing, though she did not believe the witch had any particular inclination towards mind reading. Surely if she could rifle through Jane’s mental file on Thor Odinson, Angrboða would have long since realised how stupid her plan actually was.

But then Jane’s disconnect from her work was something else. Perhaps it was just the pure and plain idiocy of it. She had no guarantee her little construct would work. Even if it did, she couldn’t predict it would have the intended effect. Jane kept working. The motion of her hands blotted out the need for active thought. It was almost something like the Zone she fell into when she set about reworking the supposed physical laws of the universe.

It didn’t take long. While she’d chosen one of the most infamously complex areas of physics to specialise in, a deep and abiding love of quantum mechanics didn’t stop her from being perfectly capable of cobbling together a simple Leiden jar. With it charged and set before her, Jane bit her lip. The plan from here on in was even simpler, to the point of pure idiocy, and it revolved around thing: Mánagarm.

Creatures of its type were attracted to electrical charge, or so Loki had implied. At the very least she might attract its attention to the point it would come to investigate. The greatest flaw lay in the fact Jane had absolutely no evidence to suggest the creature would be in the vicinity. Still, she could recall its sad great face the last time they had left; whatever else moved in its alien mind, Mánagarm had been terribly attached to Thor. Though she suspected it had been somewhat more ambivalent towards herself, the point could become moot simply because she had no idea how good such a creature’s memory might be. There was nothing to say it would even remember them, let alone wait for his quasi-master to come back.

 _I can’t wait_.

Jane knew that she should. Thor would come when he knew where she was. With her hands about the jar Jane bowed her head, suddenly so very tired of everything. She couldn’t sit around waiting for Thor every damn time she was in trouble. She wouldn’t sit around waiting for him ever again.

Even with the fur now around her shoulders, Jane had no real guarantee she wouldn’t freeze after a couple of minutes of outdoor exposure. While she was pretty sure that the altitude brought most people low on places like Mount Everest, it had to be the cold that got them in the end. Then she pushed the fear of it aside as irrelevant. If this plan failed, it failed. Angrboða would simply haul her back inside. She wouldn’t get anything out of Thor with a dead Jane on her hands. She wouldn’t get anything with a _live_ one either, but then she didn’t know that.

An ugly thought emerged: Angrboða could just toss her body into a crevasse and pretend as if Jane had never even been here. But then her mind had always been programmed to take a quick solution. Casting a look around, Jane slipped her watch off her wrist and laid it upon a table. Thor would tear the place apart looking for her no matter what the witch said – because Darcy had seen the abduction. And Darcy would tell everyone who would listen: from Thor to SHEILD to that weird guy who lived on the corner and only ever bought milk and pickles from their local Budgens. Jane didn’t have a clue if Thor would recognise the watch as hers specifically, but figured in even this junkyard it would be anachronistic enough to stand out. And if he looked at it, the engraving on the reverse would be all the proof he needed.

_Jane – we are all made of stars. LFYD._

The taste of salt at the back of her throat was familiar, harsh. He’d signed everything he wrote to her like that – from notes on the fridge asking her to pick up more milk when she was out at class, to emails exchanging formulae and hypothesis, to postcards sent from both farflung locales and the next county over.

 _Love From Your Dad_.

Her lungs expanded, a deep breath drawn, held. Then she let it out. “ _Right_.” Climbing to her feet had never felt so final. “Time to rock and roll.”

In the distance, somewhere further out in the cave, Jane could just barely make out the motion of the witch. It wasn’t a _lot_ of distance between them, by any stretch of the imagination, but as far as Jane was concerned, it would be enough. She didn’t even have to be successful while she was out there. If she could just summon Mánagarm, tempt him towards a familiar scent…

Jane had always been one to take her chances. She’d never have become the youngest PhD student Erik had ever taken at Columbia otherwise. With her precious cargo under one arm, wrapped in thick canvas, she set her jaw. And then, she ran.

Nothing reared up to stop her, magical or otherwise. But then there the world beyond the entrance to the cave was enemy enough to a mortal in no way dressed for such conditions. Stumbling out into the snow, she barely kept her footing; already she’d sunk shin-deep into the drifts of fresh snow. Struggling, arms wrapped about the damn jar, she cast a wild look around. Standing on water would be a fool’s errand – and while she was half mad, she didn’t think she was quite a fool. Not yet, at least.

Blindly she cast about again, eyes dazzled even in the low light by the reflection from the snow. A rock outcrop blundered into her view, and without a second thought she ploughed forward, desperation giving her a strength almost preternatural. Stumbling up onto it, her teeth chattered in tuneless staccato as she unwrapped the makeshift capacitor. For a moment, she paused, and closed her eyes.

“This is crazy,” she whispered, and discharged the jar. “Mánagarm!” The shout rocked the air itself, a localised and impossible thunderclap. A moment later, it spiralled upward to a scream. “ _Mánagarm!_ ”

Though she couldn’t risk a glance backward, there was no response as yet from Angrboða. Jane still realised there was no chance in hell she’d missed any of that. “You stupid damn dog,” she muttered, hands fisted in the fur, already freezing from the tips downward. With her nose now numb, her lips lurched clumsy around every syllable. “MÁNAGARM!”

When lightning filled the sky entire Jane wondered if she hadn’t gone a bit too far with her baby science project after all.

 

*****

 

Perhaps there was something wrong with him, given this was how he felt most alive: seeking out battle with his brother at his side, aiding his friends in the quest to make all the realms a place safe to live and love and be free.

Yet their entrance was not quite the elegant drama it would have been, if it were presented in the stories and songs. Thor landed too hard, his precious cargo scattering to the four cardinal points despite the fact there was only three of them. Loki sat up first, hair speckled with snowflakes and wearing a face like thunder. But then Thor had always been rather partial to storm and chaos.

“I cannot believe I agreed to this farce,” he announced, fury snapping his voice like a whip, and Thor didn’t bother to hold back a laugh even as he cast a quick look to make sure Darcy and Ian remained in two whole and separate pieces.

“I believe there was blackmail involved.”

“Don’t remind me.” His head whipped around, the motion very much like a bloodhound taking the scent. “Oh, there she is. And she’s not dead.”

“Good.” Readjusting his grip upon Mjölnir’s haft, ready to spin her for either altitude or attack, Thor turned. Although Darcy and Ian had already began to flounder their way over in her direction, Jane would have been hard to miss: perched upon a rock outcrop, she was all but a beacon: for both rescue, and for harm. “Jane! _Jane_!”

His thunderous voice combined with Darcy’s, and Jane’s small body stiffened. Whipping around too fast, Thor caught a sharp breath as she promptly went down on her rear end. Then she was fighting to gain her feet, sliding down the rock she’d been standing on. With a grin he verge on rushing to her side, when the smoke-sharp voice sidled into his ear.

“Thus comes the Odinson.” When she laughed, low and sweet, it dizzied his mind in the manner of Vanir incense. “I believe you and I have a debt?”

Though the voice’s volume would lead to the logical conclusion that Angrboða was but a footstep away, when Thor turned to find her at some distance he couldn’t be surprised. Throwing one’s voice was a simple enough turn of seiðr, or so he’d learned at a young age spent in the company of Loki and his tricks.

The witch herself remained much as he recalled her, though to look at her now left his heart coiled and tight, like a charged jar unable to release its energy. When they had last met, he’d had little point of reference; all other Jötnar he’d met had been warrior class, hulking giants of muscle and brawn. Angrboða had been at odds with all of that, had been sleek and sly and lovely. Having since known Loki in the same skin she now wore, his body could not help but rise to something urgent in the easy sensuality of her.

“I suppose I should thank you for this little display?” One slim air moved through the air, its metallic tang fresh enough to burn. The wink followed the curve of one rounded hip. “I always did enjoy a little _spark_ in the air.”

Thor’s throat wouldn’t allow a swallow, too dry and too tight, and he did not look at Loki. But strangely enough his little brother only gave a light chuckle, as unconcerned as he might be when strolling late into a gathering of councillors and diplomats. “Angrboða,” he said, and he even managed to sound just a little bit bored. It twisted in Thor’s stomach like concentrated bile; it brought up the too-close memories of Thanos and his disdain for all he thought below him. And Loki’s eyes now were very very cold. “Give my brother his little toy back and let’s not have carnage. I’m too tired for it – though if you insist, believe me, there will be blood. And it will be yours.”

Angrboða arched one eyebrow, dark as the long hair that fluttered about her shoulders. When she smiled, it emerged sly and sneaking from beneath the lowered curve of her long eyelashes. “There is always blood. It flows between Jötunheimr and Asgard like a river.”

The energy between them was genuinely palpable; it was no storm brewing here, but a hurricane with the destructive power to end entire realms. With fingers tightening over Mjölnir, whose haft they had not once left, Thor glanced away, to the right. To both his relief and concern he saw Jane, supported between her two friends. Though he was glad to see her well enough, three civilians this close to the potential blast zone of seiðkona and seiðmaðr could not hope to escape unscathed.

“Loki, go to them.”

He did not break gaze with the witch. “What, and leave you to negotiate alone?” One corner of his lips curved to harsh smile. “Do I look like an idiot?”

“Loki.” The simple authority of the tone surprised him, if the quick turn was any judge of Loki’s state of mind. Thor held his gaze with a calm one might only find in the heart of the storm. “I made this deal,” he said, grave, and Loki snorted.

“And see what a marvellous job you’ve made of it already.”

“I will not ask again.”

Loki’s lips pursed tight together, the green of his eyes poisonous – and it had not been so long ago that Thor had seen that same expression. It had only evaporated after their fury and their lust and their frustration had stormed themselves to satiated, lain in the mud of a foreign chunk of space rock.

And from the sudden curve of Loki’s mouth, he was thinking of much the same. “Do remember you explained it as a _diarchy_ , brother,” he snapped, and flicked his eyes to Angrboða. Without a word he turned then from them both and moved away. Thor might have called it a flounce, but then Loki, even as a child, had always been too elegant for that. Displeasure still defined every movement of long muscle and lean power. Angrboða watched him go, one eyebrow arched high.

“A diarchy?” When she looked to Thor, the mocking tone only grew with every word. “Surely you know how foolish it would be, to grant one born of chaos any manner of executive authority.”

Thor ignored her, even as his fingers twitched about Mjölnir’s leathered haft. “You have interfered with the life and welfare of a very dear friend. Tell me now why I should not strike you down where you stand.”

She only snorted. “And they said Midgard had taught the brat prince something of mercy.”

“Mercy and perspective are different concepts. If I am to be a king, I must learn to do what is best for the all rather than the few.”

The words surprised him with their evenness – but never with their truth. Angrboða pursed her generous lips, tilted her head; snowflakes glittered like diamonds in her dark hair, the effect only enhancing her beauty. “And my death would benefit the realms entire?” Waving a hand in diplomatic disgust, she brushed at her gown, and shook her head. “Come, we are not here to play that game.”

“Then what game do we play?”

“I want your brother.”

“He is not mine to give.”

The flatness of the statement only made her roll her eyes. “He is yours to command.”

“You are a fool to think so.” Very carefully he did not look to him, to the others. He trusted them to be safe. “And even if he was, what leverage do you have now? Jane is safe.”

“For now.” Tossing her hair, she added almost carelessly: “Forever is another matter entirely.”

“You will not harm her.”

“Not if I have what I wish.” Impatience shimmered in her movement for the first time, and then she shook it away, expression sly and knowing. “But quite aside from the rather vulgar matter of leverage, there is something simpler I could take you by.”

Thor raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Honour.” It was a low blow, one that left him breathless even as she shrugged, as if such niceties scarcely mattered except as tools for her use. “You made me a promise. Whatever I wanted in return for the information you desired.”

Loki had made a deal with Hela that had bound him to Thor in ways neither of them quite understood. A shiver ran through him now; perhaps he had made a bargain that had quite the opposite effect. “I cannot give you Loki.”

“I don’t need him forever.” One hand trailed across her lips, tracing the sly smile there. “Just a little.” Her voice dropped, hitched as if another’s touch had drifted in the path of her own. “Just _enough_.”

Much as he knew the answer, he did not wish to acknowledge it. “What do you mean?”

For the first time Angrboða appeared uncertain; without the act she seemed much smaller, far more thoughtful. Then she shrugged, sliding back into the sensual ease of a witch about her work. “There are threads, and they may not always be present in the final weave of this life.” Her eyes slid sideways, wide and open, fit enough to swallow his brother whole. “But I would take what remains, and I would weave them tight and true.”

She turned back to him, as if to gauge his response. Swaying closer, Thor resisted the urge to step back. She had come too close; he could feel the cool breath from her dark lips, the crimson gaze hot even in the cool of Jötunheimr. “What threads?” her asked, and she sighed, fingers trailing light over her collarbone.

“His child.” Her hand dipped low, palm over her heart. “Our child.” The smirk she wore now coloured his world bright red. “Our _children_.”

The rising fury held the sharp ozone of the berserker, straining to be loosed from his bonds deep in the hollows of Thor’s subconscious. “No.”

“Do not deny me what I want.” Angrboða still stepped back, light and lovely in what could not be called a retreat. “I am no one to be trifled with, Odinson. Not I, nor those of my blood.” A glance to Loki, and her scorn shone bright as arterial spray. “And he is not of yours. Whatever fool love you’ve engendered in his heart through the lies of your father, the blood will out. He will come back to those who know best what he truly is.”

“He is _Loki_.”

“That is not the name his dam gave him.”

“It is the only name that matters!”

The shout rolled about the glacial valley, but Angrboða’s frown bore only disgust, and no fear. “So you will not compel his cooperation?”

“Even if I could, I never would.”

“Then I will just have to compel yours.”

She struck like a snake – but it was not venom spit into his eyes, but rather kinetic coiled energy thrown across the space between herself and the others. Seiðr could move too swift for even the reaction of an Asgardian warrior, yet Loki apparently had anticipated it. Already he had shoved Jane out of the way – too hard, but then it could be difficult to temper one’s strength to that of mortals – and a shield glowed bright flaming green as it dissipated the attack. When it fell, Loki’s smile gleamed white in the gloom of the Járnvid.

“You missed, Angrboða.”

One hand moved languid through the thin air. “Depends on where I aimed.”

The second bolt cut through the air towards a wide-eyed Darcy. There was some distance between them – Ian moved quick, but of course Jane would never stand for either. She had thrown herself into the path of the blast even as Thor loosed Mjölnir with a roar.

There proved just enough time to deflect the damned thing. Mjölnir slammed back into his hand, crackling in anticipation of a second round – and indeed the witch had moved, alarmingly quick, towards Darcy. Her left hand rose, palm crossed with rune and quicksilver seiðr flame. Thor pulled Mjölnir back again, but stayed his hand at just the last moment.

Ian had moved too quick almost to be seen; the witch had barely crossed his path when leverage had her flying over his head. Her shot never reached Darcy, fizzling as she crumpled upon the snow, face hidden in the mass of long black hair.

Thor could only stare as the mortal looked at both his hands like they’d betrayed him, and then skittered four or five feet backward. He was not quite the fool some thought him, having grabbed Darcy’s hand as he did so. She pulled along behind him, eyes wide and fixed upon the unmoving Jötunn.

“Ian. What the fuck did you just do?”

He shook his head, eyes wild. “That wasn’t me! That was Thor!”

“No, dude, that was all you.”

“No, Thor taught me how, and…oh _fuck_.”

The witch was rising, hair a wild mass about the sudden silver gleam of her ridged skin. Darcy made a noise very close to a squeak, and stepped backward. “Right, what was the next thing he taught you?”

“Er – run?”

As they turned to do just that, the witch made no effort to follow them. Instead she turned to look to Thor, who had crossed to stand between those of Midgard and the Jötunn witch. Any apparent fury she might have felt at the inelegance of her encounter with Ian did not linger. Her smile suggested she had much more interesting prey more readily to hand. “So, the mighty Thor will not uphold his word,” she mocked, low and lilting. “What kind of hero are you?”

“One who knows that it is not the duty of others to pay the price of his own debts.”

“Well,” she said, and laid a finger light upon her lips. “Perhaps then you should pay yours now?”

Thor had been raised in a palace, the beloved first-born prince of a golden realm under the rule of a king known for war and seiðr. But he had not been pampered and protected from war – he had been raised to it. And thus he knew she would strike long before she actually did, Mjölnir raised to deflect the seiðr-driven blow of frozen air and water.

But he did not expect her to move with it, and that was his mistake – for he had _known_ her similarity to Loki. And while Lady Angrboða, the seiðkona his brother had spent so much time of his adolescence with, had been for all intents and purposes a noblewoman, she had been Asgardian with it. And no Asgardian grew up without knowing how to fight.

She struck him low and hard, the surprise of it more crippling than the force. When she wheeled around for another strike, he had to acknowledge the strength of it; like Loki, Angrboða hit harder than she appeared to have the ability to. Whether it was training or the innate similarities they shared as Jötnar runts, he could not say. But then it did not matter, when he was driven to his knees.

She must have known she could not defeat him, even had she taken him by surprise. Thor was rising, Mjölnir in hand, when another force struck across her wrist. With a shriek she reared back, turning with fury burning in her eyes.

Loki stood, gloved hands sparking green fire. At his feet lay a blade, its blade a bleeding crimson.

 _Poison_.

So casually he moved, atop the half-powdered snow as if he weighed nothing at all. Stalking closer, blades appeared in both hands, gleaming silver in the dim late light of the Járnvid.

“Did you just attempt to murder my brother?”

Unconcerned by the casual violence underwriting every word Loki spoke, as he drew dreadfully closer, Angrboða gave a little shrug. “He was of no particular use to me in the end.”

“And I am?”

“You know this is how it is meant to be.” There was no seduction to her voice, or the motion of her body. Instead a frank truth moved every word, her hands held out and open as if in truce. “You cannot play at this game of the Asgardian prince any longer, Loki. The truth is out, and every denial of it since is just fighting your true self.” Now it turned persuasive, an old friend begging another to come home. “Drop the glamour, Loki. Be the Jötunn seiðmaðr you truly are.” Her hands were light on his face, her eyes wide and pleading. “Mix your blood with mine, and see what miracles can be wrought of the strongest seed planted in the most fertile soil.”

The fury in Thor screamed for release – for the smash of hammer into bone, of the cut of sword into flesh. But this was Loki’s fight. His blades moved with the fierce fury of a Valkyrie’s wings, death drawn down from all sides and never just one. Angrboða dipped to one side, mouth open in a lilting little laugh. That was her mistake, and Thor knew she would come soon enough to understand it. Loki had been born of ice, but his temper blazed like fire set to a dry forest – and nothing could stop it, not until it had burned itself out.

And Thor would not be its end now.

They met over and over in a clash of blade and flesh. Much as Thor had long enjoyed watching his brother duel, his heart twinged to see it now. Every arching motion, every twisting turn to build and drive momentum came with the shadow of their mother. Frigga had taught Loki how to master his lean form and then use it to master others. They were lessons Loki had never forgotten.

As it would always be, such battle hinged upon but one moment, and one mistake. A blade streaked across one wrist, and Loki’s own weapon dropped into the snow as he hissed his shock. Taking a step back, the pain of it apparently drove down to one knee. Angrboða shook out her hair, stepped forward, hips swaying. Mjölnir gave a spark of alarm at his side, and Thor took one step forward.

“Loki!”

But he stopped, and at one word alone. “Thor.” Loki stared upward, face twisted with dark amusement as Angrboða came to a stop before him. “Brother. Do not interfere.”

And Angrboða paid his words no heed, as if Thor were dead to her. “I’ve known you since you were as high as my knee, Loki. I knew what you were hundreds of years before you stumbled into the truth and let it break your mind wide open.” With one hand upon a shapely hip she sighed, her crimson eyes holding little but amused mockery. “Do you really think you can stop me from taking what I want?”

He smiled. “I don’t need to.”

One hand, palm open and upward, thrust to the sky. And even though Thor was the stormlord, the summoner of thunder and lightning both, the sky lit as if set aflame by Loki’s will alone.

Strange moments passed, bright and overexposed by the preternatural light overhead. Then a tremendous roar shook the world by its very foundations. Thor himself had trouble keeping his feet; beside him Jane, Ian, and Darcy went down in a tangled heap. Loki stood tall, and Angrboða had no need for concern. She could not stand, not when a mass of flesh and bone and armoured skin had ploughed into her with the force of a tsunami.

“Mánagarm!”

The beast did not look up, bent low over his prey, saliva dripping freely from a jaw half-opened on a rumbling continuous snarl. Much as Thor had felt a kinship to the alien beast, he did not move first. Instead Loki stepped close, face dark as winter night. With a shudder, Thor moved quick to come to his side. Even heroes could be too late. Blood leeched into the snow, a brilliant spreading inkstain from the opened throat. Thor closed his eyes, turned away. He had not known the Jötnar had red blood.

Darcy’s voice came to him as if from a million miles away. “Is that…Mister Frosty?!”

Angrboða had not died hard, nor slow. It was but a short time later that Loki moved to lay the body out, hands folded over her chest, face covered by a cloth drawn from a deep pocket. If not for the cradle of her blood, if not for the stillness of her, she might have been asleep in the snow of her homeworld.

Regret coursed through him, a hot and burning current, chased always by shame. _I would rather be a good man, than a great king_. When he’d come her for Jane, Loki at his side, Thor had always known the possibility of this ending. It did not mean he could not despise the sheer waste of it.

A glance to Loki told him little; his younger brother wore the shuttered expression he had perfected as a child in the court of Asgard. Thor could not know if he felt sorrow for the lost children of his true blood. But then, so much could have been different in both of their lives – in all of their lives. Thor had known it at Urðr’s well. Loki had known it in his heart from the very beginning.

As if reading his brother’s chaotic thoughts, Loki’s voice rose, clear and calm: the knowing wisdom of one who had dabbled in seiðr from even before he knew its name. “We need to burn her heart.”

“I believe I might oblige,” Thor said quietly, the hammer at his side arcing electricity. It echoed the faint glimmer of green sparks about Loki’s long fingers. But something entirely different crackled to life a moment later.

“Can I do it?”

Loki’s seiðr fizzled to nothing, one of those rare moments where he appeared genuinely startled. “What?”

Darcy held up the small black device Thor had augmented what felt to be an age ago, her usually bright face drawn into dark determined lines. “I brought this with the full intention of using it. And then I didn’t. I just feel like we need some closure, here.”

Building a pyre could not prove easy in a land of snow and ice. It was Loki who retrieved the fuel, bringing it in armfuls from the depths of Angrboða’s cave. At first, he would only go in alone. In the end, they all helped. But it was Darcy who moved forward to touch the spark to the kindling, though Ian held out a hand for her to take the moment she stepped back into their dual orbit.

The scent of it turned even Thor’s stomach, and he had been upon many a battlefield strewn with the dead and dying. But no-one backed away – or at least, not far. Jane soon drifted back to where Mánagarm had settled his great body, mandibles resting upon his extended front legs. After a moment she sat down at his side, then leaned her back against his great mass. With her eyes closed, and face turned to the sky, she could have been a porcelain doll left out in the snow.

“Jane.” She opened her eyes, turned her head to him as he hunkered down at her side. “You are all right?”

The smile was broad but wan; her skin had turned dreadfully pale again the fur she wore about slim shoulders. “Yeah. Well…yeah. I guess so.”

Stripping off his own cloak, Thor draped the crimson material about her; it all but swamped her small body, though she snuggled into it like a child curling into a cradle. Much as he wished to draw her close, to share some of his own body heat with her, he found himself unable to do anything so simple as reach towards her. “I did not intend for this to happen,” he said instead, low and shamefaced. This time when she looked to him she’d stopped smiling, but her eyes were kind.

“I know you didn’t.” She blinked, just once, and did not look away. “It’s okay. Really. All of it.”

Under that dark gaze Thor shifted, uncomfortable. But he owed it to her, to not turn away from a truth he wasn’t entirely sure how to speak aloud. She understood that better than he did, perhaps; she turned away first. When he followed her gaze he found it had settled upon Loki. It held no heat, no venom, nor even exactly _sadness_. His brother remained pale against the blue tint of the Jötunn snow, face a blank page as he watched the ashes of Angrboða spiral ever upward, and to the sky.

“I don’t pretend to understand it,” she said, very soft. “But…hey. I’m an astrophysicist. If there’s one thing I believe in, it’s that the universe is strange and fucked up and bizarre…but at its heart, it’s beautiful. And it’s _alive_.” Her hand closed around his, small and soft and so very very strong. “Really, that’s all that matters.” When he looked down, her smile was both simple and bright. “We’re alive, aren’t we?”

His throat closed over, words hoarse. “Thank you.”

She squeezed tight, just once. Then she let go. “You’re welcome. You’ll always be welcome.”

Only when the last of the ash had floated away upon even this thin atmosphere did Loki break his vigil. When he moved close, Thor resisted the sharp urge to go to him, to hold him up. His brother, so elegant and fluid, moved as if he’d only just remembered how many battles he had fought in the last two days. His own muscles ached in sympathetic misery as he rose, stepped forward. Loki did not take his proffered hand, coming to stand before Thor: tall, unbroken. Equal.

“Can we go back to Asgard _now_?”

Unable to help himself, Thor guffawed at the peevish note in his brother’s voice. He was perhaps only saved from a well-deserved throttling when Darcy scowled. “Only if you’re dropping us off along the way.”

Loki blinked, then gave her a brilliant smile. “Can it be literal dropping?”

“Loki.” Still he couldn’t mask his amusement, or his delight. Not that he believed there was much reason to try. “Yes, we shall take you home.”

There was a war raging in Loki’s mind, but he settled beneath Thor’s arm with only a half-exaggerated sigh. “Without the dog,” he stipulated, all but shaking a finger in his face; across from them, Darcy’s expression congealed into total disbelief as she swivelled to face Mánagarm.

“That’s a _dog_?”

With faint regret, Thor capitulated. “All right. Without Mánagarm.”

But his melancholy couldn’t be masked. With clear exasperation Loki sighed, and then he found compromise. “We will collect him later.”

Gratitude came easy, his heart light. “Truly?”

“Oh, Norns, I am going to regret this.”

But it was Ian who spoke next, running a hand back through his sweat-riddled hair so it all but stood on end. “I really think there’s something we all need to do the second we get there,” he said, almost glumly, and Darcy gave him the kind of look Thor had seen Frigga give Odin a thousand times or more.

“What, a cup of tea and a sitdown?” she asked. And when he looked up, he grinned fit to melt Jötunheimr whole.

“No.” And he swept his hands to the sky, as if inviting them all home. “Let’s go to the pub.”

And Thor grinned. They’d done what they came to do. Now was the time to sit amongst friends, and celebrate their lives and their loves. Without thought he reached for his brother, and looked to the sky that would bear them home one more time.

 

*****

 

When it came down to unlikely scenarios, Jane supposed she could think of a few more ridiculous than this one – but then possibly not. While they garnered a few strange looks at their entrance, within moments it all dissolved into vague shrugs and people returning to their pints, their pokies, their pool. Sometimes Jane had to wonder who were the most blasé about the weirdest of events: New Yorkers specifically, or the British in general.

But whatever else was going on, something strange and warm had settled itself amongst in the motley group they made: the astrophysicists, the pseudo-gods, and the interns squared. Against the better judgement of everyone involved – except possibly Darcy – they had gathered about a wooden table with one dodgy leg, copious amounts of alcohol soon to follow.

It had to have been at least a little time later that Jane sloshed some of her Pimms from the jug as she fished out a strawberry, held it up in a mock toast. “To friends,” she announced, “and not friends, and friends absent, and friends still to come. _Friends_.”

“ _Man_ ,” said Darcy, and not without admiration. Her own pint of lager was held proudly high. “How much have you _had_?”

“Enough.” Biting hard into the strawberry, she grinned around the mixture of fruit juice and tart spirit. “Although maybe it’s never enough.”

A snort from across the table drew her attention; Loki had inclined his own tall glass of some German beer only Erik could pronounce properly. “I will drink to that,” he said, and promptly drained the entire contents without a hitch. There hadn’t been much of an edge to the words, but Thor still jostled his elbow hard enough that the emptied glass fell over.

“Stop it,” he said, mild, and Loki gave him an arch look that wouldn’t have seemed out of place had he been trying to subjugate the world again. Yet when he spoke, the words emerged low and sultry, eyes made dark by the dilation of his pupils.

“Try me.”

Thor met the gaze, even blue sky – though there was a flash of silver there that had the hairs on the back of her neck rising. It was Darcy who spoke, snorting even as she reached over to snag Ian’s half-filled handle. “Hey, guys – public space, yeah?”

Something in Loki’s expression told Jane, if not Darcy, that such meant little to him. But then Thor promptly slung an arm about his younger brother’s shoulder, raised his own glass. He even managed to drop a wink to Jane herself, who couldn’t help but laugh at his booming echo of her own toast.

“To friends!”

“I’ll _scull_ to that,” Ian said cheerfully, managing to defend his beer long enough from Darcy’s devious hands in order to empty what remained. As she began to protest the clear lies she’d been spoonfed about British chivalry, Erik pushed back from the table and his own small collection of glassware.

“I need another drink.”

At first Jane watched him weave his way to the bar; only when he’d reached it without keeling over did she look again to the cluster of glasses he’d already emptied. Perhaps she ought to be concerned about how much he’d had, given he was sitting across from the alien god-prince who had spent days rummaging around in his brain. But then Thor had promised Loki had better things to be concerned about – no offense intended. Apparently Loki had kicked him. Hard, if the wince was anything to go by.

Yet whatever had passed between Loki and Erik earlier, relayed to her in brief whispers by Darcy on a girl’s tandem trip to the bathroom, it had settled something. Darcy hadn’t called it peace, or even a truce, but it was something. If it helped Erik to sleep at night without a pharmacopeia’s worth of hypnotics and neuroleptics, Jane supposed it might almost be enough.

Strangely, Loki almost seemed to be involved in the conversation – or at least, Thor spoke in animated delight to Darcy and Ian, and Loki wasn’t completely ignoring them. Listening in brief snatches, she gathered it was something about the final battle with Thanos. Without knowing the details herself, she leaned over, noted Ian’s brow had furrowed deeply.

“You mean you never saw a body? How do you know he’s actually _dead_?”

Darcy nodded with sage assurance, using the straw from her cocktail to emphasise the point. “You should have nuked the site from orbit.”

Ian nodded gravely. “Only way to be sure.”

Assuming there were to be no technical details discussed, Jane tuned out, moved her attention moved to the television over the bar. It had been playing some local football match – she’d never understood the appeal, though Darcy had picked up a love of it based purely upon big men in little shorts – but it looked to have switched to the news. The local coverage gave way to stock footage of Capitol Hill, and she sat up straight. Washington was in a bloody shambles, as the locals would put it.

She didn’t realise the others had turned to follow her gaze until the story ended. Darcy’s low whistle at her side held both admiration and shock. “No wonder SHIELD didn’t give a shit about us.”

Even as Erik set down another set of drinks, Thor had grown very tense. Mjölnir lay quiescent at his feet, but Jane could taste metal on the air, as if a half-shielded plutonium core had suddenly just gone critical. “We should go to them.”

Jane very purposefully did not look at Loki. “No,” she said, clear and perfectly loud enough to be heard by everyone in a ten foot radius. Only those at their table swivelled to stare at her, faces populated by varying states of disbelief and shock. Thor spoke first, confusion winning out over any other clear emotion.

“What?”

“No,” she repeated, and she almost wanted to smile. Instead she pressed her finger around the rim of her glass, the damp skin making a low hum with every pass. “Look, Thor: if they needed you, they would have called already. They have your number, right? Or whatever passes for your number?”

Though she’d seen a flash of agreement there beforehand, Thor’s eyes were already straying back to the television. As his side, Darcy and her Galaxy worked in frantic tandem, scrolling through news updates.

“Thor,” she said, gentle. He looked back to her, shaking his head. Loki’s gaze seemed fit to bore holes into them both.

“I…they can contact me. But SHIELD—”

“SHIELD’s pretty much kaput,” Darcy announced, already moving to the next open tab to digest the fresh information there. “Don’t think they’re got a phone to even call their lawyers with, let alone the alien space prince cavalry.”

“The Avengers,” Jane said, soft, and when Thor stiffened even further she shook her head, placed one hand over his great forearm. “If they need you, they will call. But right now, we need you.” When she tightened her grip, she could feel the heat of him even through the linen of his suit jacket. When she smiled, she meant it. “And you need us.”

Darcy scowled, dropped her phone. “I need a drink,” she announced, and glared at her abused phone with stark distaste. “And more data.”

“Allow me.”

Loki rose from the table, smooth and elegant as smoke from a Hepburn cigarette. Darcy looked up at him from the table, eyes very wide. “Wow, you can top up my phone with magic?”

The strange look he gave her then could almost have been called pitying. “Perhaps you will only require water. It seems you have had enough alcohol.”

With a scowl, Darcy reached for her phone, already pulling out her credit card even while levelling an impressive glare in Thor’s direction. “Your brother is a total buzzkill, you know that?”

Another round came, courtesy of Loki – not that anyone wanted to ask where he’d found the cash to pay for it. Ian then went a round, and Erik rose again for another. Jane herself was starting to become confused at what they were laughing about, and if it was her turn to get the next one. Somewhere behind that was the vague worry that Loki was also smiling, and actually looking like he meant it. It had just gone midnight when Ian raised a hand for another round on him. The bartender who brought it waved away the twenty quid extended his way, the light Antipodean accent just emphasising the friendly grin he wore.

“It’s on the house, mate.”

One knit-clad elbow dug deep into Ian’s side even as his face flushed deep red. “Oooh, Ian, I think he _likes_ you!” The devious amusement evaporated within seconds; Darcy’s mouth turned downward, indignation winning out over teasing. “Hey, wait a minute! He’s _my_ boyfriend! Off the market! Get off my lawn!”

To his credit, the barman barely blinked despite the half-inebriated finger waggling directly in his face. “It’s…kind of his birthday?”

“I – _what_?” The tragic expression upon her face had laughter bubbling up in Jane’s chest, though she kept it down; Erik seemed less successful, burying something like a snort in his hastily raised beer. Darcy caught none of it, having turned her full pique upon her poor boyfriend. “Why didn’t you _say_?”

The earlier flush only deepened, though Jane couldn’t imagine how any one person could have enough blood in them to turn such a brilliant crimson. With admirable aplomb Ian still managed to raise his charged glass, but the pure power of Darcy’s best death glare had him lowering it again. “Well, it just didn’t seem right to mention it. With everything else going on. Yeah?”

“Yeah, _no_.” But any anger she’d directed at him had apparently turned inward, given she now leaned over the table with the kind of pathetic drunkard’s expression that would have inspired Billy Joel’s piano man. “I am the _worst girlfriend ever_.”

Despite the fact they’d been caught _in flagrante delicto_ more than once, Ian only managed an awkward pat to her back. “Well, not every guy gets to go to another world for his birthday, so I wouldn’t say that.”

Having since buried her head in her arms upon the table, Darcy’s moan was surprisingly intelligible. “Witch burning isn’t an appropriate birthday present, Ian!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Loki observed, almost negligent where he sipped at his fresh pint. “It wouldn’t go amiss in certain social circles in Asgard.”

In answer Thor mirrored Darcy quite nicely, face masked in his hands, voice muffled by the broad expanse of his palms. “That was _once_ , Loki.”

His brother’s cut-glass smile only grew wider. Across from them both, eyes saucer-round, Darcy leaned perceptibly closer to Ian; the condensation on her beer beaded bright around whitening knuckles. “I…honestly can’t decide if I want to know or not.”

With a shrug, Jane took the role of house speaker. “I vote not,” she announced, and wound her fingers about pebbled bulk of her beer stein. “Let’s just toast the birthday boy, yeah?”

The guy still standing there looked around the lot of him, and shook his head. “Ian, mate, you have some weird friends.” Then he stopped on his second round of the table, directly in front of Loki. “Actually, isn’t that—”

Jane determinedly raised her glass. “Happy birthday, Ian.”

“Many happiest of returns, my friend.”

Amidst the chink of glassware there came more of that haze of alcohol and laughter. Jane couldn’t even be sure it was just one beer she’d downed before others approached the table; they formed a kind of pointer formation, the leading girl proudly bearing a small round platter.

“We heard there was a birthday boy,” she announced, and gave a little shame-faced grin. “It’s not much, but…”

It was certainly not a proper cake by any stretch of the imagination: just a little cluster of cupcakes arranged semi-artfully upon a paper doily. Red velvet, judging by the cream cheese and scattering of red dust upon them. Ian beamed like he’d just been handed the crown jewels, and without the slightest bit of encouragement leaned forward to blow out the single candle. Loki was not the only one to wince at the off-key rendition of the birthday song that accompanied him.

In the midst of the clapping and obligatory cheering, the barman from earlier stopped mid-strike. “Oh, shite, forgot to bring a knife. John, go back to the kitchen—”

Help could come from the most unlikely of corners. Loki, voice smooth as a rink’s ice, flicked a hand open upon the table. “Here, use mine.”

There must have been something there – but the more Jane tried to focus upon it, the blearier it become to her eyes. Ian appeared to have no trouble, using the knife to split the cupcakes into halves before handing them around. Jane waved away a piece, stomach already protesting the thought of something non-liquid amongst the alcohol. Loki did the same, though he held out a hand to accept the blade back.

Yet Ian lingered over it, regret almost palpable in his voice as he placed it in Loki’s palm with a near-reverent sigh. “This is a beautiful knife.”

His eyes flashed almost as bright as his teeth when he smiled. “It is.”

Loki did not miss the sharp Jane sent him. But first Loki squirrelled the blade away in one of many unseen pockets. Only then did he tilt his head to her long enough to catch her frown, his own smile all the wider. Then he turned to Thor, who was already reaching for a second helping even as Darcy lunged forward to snag the largest remaining piece.

“It is getting late.” When Thor looked to him, startled, Darcy claimed the cake with fierce delight. Loki raised an eyebrow, but his gaze was meant for Thor alone. “We should return to Asgard.”

“Asgard?” Thor’s smile was lopsided, almost gentle as he leaned forward, brushed against the side of his brother’s hand with but the barest touch of fingertips. “You mean home.”

Loki shuddered as if struck by strong current – and as Jane bore witness to the strange heat of the look passing between them, she supposed he might actually have been. But even she had to wonder how welcome Loki would be there, the ending of Thanos or not. Loki’s own expression, shuttered as it was, seemed to suggest he thought much the same. But Thor remained as she had always known him: steady, strong, all simple truth in that silver-blue gaze.

Then, he smiled. “Yes. Home.”

Jane raised her glass. “So,” she said, and managed a grin of her own. “So, to friends, yeah?”

It seemed the entire remaining population of stragglers in the bar joined in. Jane drained her glass in one quick swallow, and asked for another. The battle was over, Ian was one year older, and whatever the hell Loki was planning next, he would be home when it happened. So would Jane. In the end, she could drink to that.


End file.
